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.**."*. 







THE MISERIES. OF HUMAN LIFE. 



THE 



MISERIES 



HUMAN LIFE: 



AN OLD FRIEND IN A NEW DRESS. 










G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE. 

M.DCCC.LIII. 



9r~ 



-frt in 3 
2 



V 3 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853, 

By G. P. Putnam & Co., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 



PREFACE. 



We must apologize to true lovers of antiquity for certain 
changes which we have thought it expedient to make, in this 
time-honored schedule of the minor miseries that fastidious 
flesh is heir to, in this dislocated world of ours. The great 
troubles are perennial, as they are universal. The alternation 
of smiles and tears in human life, is as constant and as decided 
as the general division of the earth's surface into land and 
water. ; but the fluctuation of the self-inflicted or factitious 
miseries occasioned by changes of fashion and growth of 
luxury, is like that produced by the partial wearing away of 
rocky shores, or the gradual retrocession of the ocean. A 
gallant of Elizabeth's time might have complained, if the 
rushes that strewed the floor of the banqueting-hall, were so 
much loaded with bones, and other remnants of the feast, 
that he could not approach his ladye-love, as she sat on the 
dais, without total sacrifice of grace and dignity ; but Would 
he have thought it necessary, like a beau of the present day, 
that the soft carpet of winter, with its splendors of flower 



6 PBEFAGK 



and leaf, should in summer give place to a smooth Indian 
matting, for the sake of coolness to his tender foot, and his 
still more susceptible imagination ? If Messieurs Testy and 
Sensitive had undertaken to record their private personal 
sufferings, three hundred years ago, the recital would not have 
elicited a single groan of sympathy from any of us, any more 
than the lamentations of an Esquimaux over a deficiency of 
train oil, or the pettish exclamations of a Hottentot belle, 
against the butcher who has failed to supply her in time with 
the peculiar substances essential to her idea of an elegant 
toilette. 

Books like this are, in fact, unconscious chroniclers of the 
progress of common things ; truer and more available, perhaps, 
than intentional records. We get information about dress, 
customs, and the condition of the social arts in Charles II. 's 
time, from Pepys's diary and such like prattle, that no writer, 
grave enough to sit down with the intent to give us informa- 
tion, would have thought worth transmitting. In truth, 
much of the spirit of a picture lies in the accessories. But 
we consider that the " Miseries of Human Life," as it stood, 
had performed its mission for the days of stage-coaches, knee- 
breeches, and tallow-candles. Those and other horrors, 
though past, are still too recent to have acquired interest or 
dignity through the mists of Time. There is a wide differ- 
ence between being antique and being old-fashioned. " Fish," 
says the proverb, " is good, but fishy is detestable." We 
had not the audacity to attempt a wholly new book of this 
kind, since every production of original genius is unique ; 



PREFACE. 



and, moreover, even the French, so potent in pettiness, have 
failed signally, in their Petites Miseres de la Vie Humaine" 
to reproduce in another form these racy dialogues. Their 
book, where it strives to be genteel,. is frigid ; and when it 
lapses into the familiar, becomes coarse. Warned, therefore, 
we adhere to the simple personalities that come home to 
every man's business and bosom, and to the homely hints 
which the genial smiles of two generations, have already 
acknowledged to be apposite to universal human nature — its 
wants and whims — its proprieties and its exactions. But as 
we desire, above all things, a quick, ready, irresistible sym- 
pathy for our petty (i. e., incident to pets) and pungent (i. e., 
fruitful in puns) miseries of the happy — (Q. Can the neutral 
word mis-hap have been originally a compound from misery 
and happiness, as signifying something between the two ?) — 
we have judged it best, in some cases, to substitute for cer- 
tain dilemmas which are neither old enough nor new enough 
to be piquant, corresponding ones costumed for our own time 
and meridian, lest the Testys and Sensitives of to-day — it is 
a great family — should set us down as fellows of no mark or 
likelihood : a conclusion which might affect our market and 
livelihood, in the long run, by making it short. To be 
suspected of being mental and moral rhinoceroses, might 
attack our rhino seriously ; so we think it expedient to show 
our sensitiveness to trifles, that, ex pede, the fastidious may 
judge of our fitness to trifle with their sensitiveness. A man 
of nerve is not the right consoler for a nervous man; nor can 
a lady who has never had a lover be expected to sympathize 



8 PREFACE. 

very sincerely with a rival who has just lost one. So decided 
and recognized is the demand for sympathy, in those who 
would aid us, that physicians invariably make faces while they 
are amputating or applying hot towels. We trust our delicacy 
will be made apparent in the straits through which we con- 
duct the reader, as the pilot proved his knowledge of "every 
rock in the channel," by running the ship on a sharp point, 
exclaiming, " There's one of 'em now !" If there is any thing 
irritating, it is to be told by a fellow whose nerves never felt 
any rasp finer than an alligator's jaw — " Never mind !" 
What does he know of the tortures a doubled rose-leaf may 
bring to one whose sensibilities have been properly cultivated, 
while his power of resistance has grown 

" Fine by degrees, and beautifully less ?" 

What does common sense know of uncommon sensitiveness ? 
Why are people called fastidious, but because they will have 
what they want, per fas aut ?iefas, let who will suffer ? The 
same root will probably be found to have borne the fashion- 
able term " fast ;" for though the signification may be a little 
modified, the main point — viz., the courage required for 

walking over other people's impertinent rights and feelings 

is still the leading idea. What business have " other people" 
with feelings ? 

A lady's dog bit a beggar-boy. " Poor dear !" exclaimed 
the sensitive creature — i. e., the lady — " I hope it will not 
make him sick !"— i. e., the dog. Exquisitely sympathetic 
nature ! 



PREFACE. 9 



It is confidently hoped that our Miseries, as revised, will 
prove highly acceptable, in particular to persons whose early 
education has been neglected. If there be anything that 
fatally betrays our having ever been in narrow circumstances, 
it is the power of putting up with difficulties and disagreea- 
bles — any thing short of perfection in any thing. The art of 
finding fault is first among the accomplishments of him who 
would substantiate his pretensions to gentility. To be easily 
pleased, stamps the individual as commonplace. Whether in 
travelling or at home, the more waiting on we require, the 
more we are respected ; and if we would have the house 
fairly at our feet, we must let our dinner cool while we 
wrangle about a chafing-dish, and swear at the chambermaid 
if she forget to leave a bible in our bedroom. 

Now, this, our excellent and portable manual, is rammed 
with hints as to all such matters. Every supposable incident 
of provocation is here collected, and the degree to which it 
is proper to be enraged at each, plainly hinted, if not expressly 
prescribed. Young people may here learn when it is best 
only to pout, and again under what circumstances scolding 
would be en regie ; while their elders will find themselves 
supplied with objurgations, both Latin and English, on 
occasion of every petty ill, from the encroachment of a friend 
to the blunder of a servant. 

In performing this service to the great world of those who 
are striving to appear not small, we have ventured, spite of 
the caution of Doctor Holmes — the Holmes of American 
Authors — in most cases, to write " as funny as we can;" for 

1* 



10 PREFACE. 

while we have a tender regard for buttons, we remember also 
the fate of that Roman author (Q. consul?) who, writing 
about the grievances of the day, gave them a turn so 
lugubrious that " many were driven to hang and drown 
themselves in despair;" upon which the public authorities — 
perhaps the city corporation — determined never to reform 

any abuses, but only to stifle all notice of them "forbade 

the said authors to write so any more I" — a prohibition which 
we should be loth to encounter. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



A groan, the first int-wrench-ment of the siege. — Corn-land grown pasture— i. e., 
past-your endurance. — Change not always improvement.— A little Latin— but 
there is a translation at the bottom. — To ride a-horse-back out and drive a horse 
back home.— A car^sequence. Not good. Pleasures of solitude.— New even-ing 
amusements — rolling gravel-walks and shearing lawns. — Plans for another cam- 
paign—to take the field in good earnest. Pp. 15-26. 

CHAPTER II. 

Miseries of games, sports, &c. Of domestic recreations. — NeAv-fashioned geometry. 
A one-line try-angle. Kobin' the dead. — TTn-ai?ra-iable fortune ! Childish 
troubles — no ease but miser-ies. — Infancy ! In fancy I see thy speechless trials ! — 
Attacks on dogs are a tax on the feelings of their masters. — The affecting history 
of poor watch. Andrew McCann — " absent, but not forgotten." — Pleasures of 
boating. — A temperance maxim. The social bowl is a bad game to make ten-strikes 
in. — Whist — a deal of trouble and " DeHl a bit of pleasure." — The arts. " Music 
hath (c) harms." — An unwelcome mental guest is a riddle which is not guessed. — 
Riddles in the old sense, i. e. sieves— to strain the faculties. — Finish of " Miseries 
Chap. 2d." (They've finished many a chap besides !) Pp. 2T-40. 



CHAPTER III. 

Miseries of cities — noisome and noisy. — Mutual awkwardness, i. e., awkwardness 
that makes you all mute. — Wakefulness. We only find oblivion when we wish — 
to be remembered ! — Ca&-bage, in the tailor sense. — A new po(l)ker. A toss-up 
for choice of partners.—" Voices of the night." A feline misery, and a feelin' de- 
scription of it. — When may a story be said to be " going the rounds" ? — When the 
bricks it was built of are being brought down a ladder. — The folly of using an in- 
come for amusing a nincom. — Theatres, &c. Places of public abusement. — " Going 
to ballet-hack'''' not so easy for a common man as a fool. — The misery of condo- 
lence.— Is it a bad box to have no box at all? — The close of the drama. Pp. 41-51. 



12 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Miseries of travelling. "Voyager c'est vivre." — Literal people a pest. A dig at the 
dignitaries. — Travelling preliminaries. — Pilgrim's Progress. Boxing the clothes 
and closing the box. — A memorandum -book — "Though lost to sight, to memory 
dear. — A post mortem examination connected with the dead letter office. — Kail- 
roads, beginning with a depot-sition on the nuisance of starting. — The whistle — a 
car-tune preliminary to a picture of despair. — A stir-up to the placidity of your 
temper, already saddley tried. — Drivers. The only stage-managers who don't get 
disgusted with the dram(a). — The pest — the dam-pest of damp sheets. — "I love a 
softer elAmb n than the upper berth, "Gent's Cabin. 1 ' — Transpositions, a new 
epidemic. Inoculation for the reader. — Light is the smoker's care if he only has a 
cigar ! — Cattle damages. The joint-stock having to pay for the dis-jointed. — Offi- 
cial appointments. Miserable sticks elevated to responsible posts. Pp. 58-79. 

CHAPTER V. 

Social trials.— A fair exhibition of the neat cattle of society. — Schisms, not witti- 
cisms. — Music racks are well named ; likewise, the strains of which they are the 
instruments. — Noisy pets, that might as well be trum-pets, or pet-ards, at once. — 
It's sometimes pleasant to be found " not at home" — never, to be found out. — 
The country tempts you away from home, and the contretemps that follow you. — 
The pains of politeness. The " mould of form" that gathers on social intercourse. 
— An unlucky speech that doesn't admit of a-mealy-oration afterwards. — Som- 
nolence vs. bene-volence. — A soar throat is just what a singer should have to 
reach the high notes with. — Building-sites and other exciting*sights not heretofore 
cited. — There's one path]/ for all diseases, we all employ when we can get it. 
Sympathy, (and we might add, 7<o;»e-opathy.)— De vinculo matrimonii. — A 
father, tend-er to his offspring. Pp. 80-97. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Library troubles. The handsomer a book is, the more it seems open to in-speck- 
tion. A book hound to be an annoyance in some way. — Magazine literature. A 
magazine of litter at your disposal. — The " cacoethes scribendi" must have been 
among the " Jesta Eomanorum." — Most authors write an infamous short-hand. 
Sin-copy personified. — The printer is aut7ior-ize& to offer the incredulous con- 
vincing proofs. Pp. 97-103. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Devil sends cooks, so there's the devil to pay. — The cheap eating-house in two 
phases.— The most thriving bug in New York, except hum-bug. An enc-roach- 
ment on our liberties.— The upper 10,000 vs. the lower 490,000 for lie-ability and 
reliability.— The brick-in-hod-and-in-hat-carrying race's aptness for all sorts of 
fabrication.— The declension of boarding-houses favorable to the conjugation of 
bachelors.— Con-fusion, i. e., a melting together.— Boarding-houses, not to be 
accused of un-chary-table-ness— Efforts at carving proving rather a hindrance than 






CONTENTS. 13 



a help. — Specimens of gold-baring quartz from the dough-minions of the baker. 
—A formal dinner. Courses that are not race-courses. — What's a-curd to sour your 
temper? — The cold chaiiy-teas of the world! — A preparation sooted to the most 
■ fastidious taste. Making a mull of it. Pp. 104-121, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Miseries domestic. House-cleaning. — A lock, no key. A chimney, smoky. — Buil 
Ding — a nuisance, alone ; and prolific in little Bills besides. — The city most opposed 

to the introduction of gas. Spermaceti. — Trouble in a gas-tly shape — not to be 

made light of. — Candle miseries. There's no rest for the wick-ed. — The Augean 

stables. (Corruption from haw-gee-in' being ox-stables.) — An over-T-urn. — 

Dressing-room miseries. — Bad habits ; the more they are broken, the worse they 
get. — A brush with the bristles. — Pantaloons. A fit — not like a glove, but like a 
convulsion. — A crumb — not of comfort. The penalty of loaf-rag in bed. — Cold 
weather. Nurses. (Both suggestive of Lap-land.) — After all, the worst thing 
about a bed is— getting up. Pp. 122-144. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Miseries of the body. (Every one nose— the blows it is subject to. — Ad udfortudate 
bad who cad dot prodoudce eb or ed. — Amateur doctors — of a mature age too. — 
The game of draughts. Checkers — of perspiration. — Better let the ladies alone — 
or you'll surely lose ! — Men's best aims are found to be misses, — women's to be 
Mrs. — Are man-tillas machines for the cultivation of the race ? Harrowing thought! 
— Happiness destroyed by an evil spell. — Modern sociability. Oh Pride, thou hell- 
pest to make mankind wretched. — A carriage is like a lottery prize: never drawn 
when one wants it. — A dis-tressed damsel. — Part-ies of pleasure well named. The 
pleasure isn't in the meeting. — Compassionable ugliness. (The consequences of 
the small pox are to be pitted.) Pp. 145-159. 



CHAPTER X. 

Miseries miscellaneous.— Caricature portraits. (A dagger-o'-type naturally suggests 
a libel.)— Take Time by his forelock, and he'll retaliate on yours.— Tears decline, 
vanity does not — except that it declines to own up. — A de-voted candidate. — 
— A clerk's not the man to cut & figure. He knows them all too well. — A Z>-serv- 
ing youth, with a Z>-sire to please.— The race of beggars. (A hand-i'-cap race.) — 
Resignation is a virtue — that office-holders are loth to practice. — The Tea-room. 
More-tea-fication of the flesh agrees with aldermanic corporations. — The pavior 
who cobbles half the street and blocks the whole. — We're in the reforming vein. 
Our efforts are probably in vain too. — Ice calls for slippers as naturally as water 
does for pumps. — Sick transit : from the odor of flowery buds to that of Bowery 
floods.— Has our work any mission but dis-mission ? Plans. An outline of the 
forces — a mere shell, having no colonel. — All appears to be dished: or, what's 
equivalent, \>e-trayed.— The greatest misery of all for the reader— the end. Pp. 
160-196. 



THE MISEEIES OF HUMAN LIFE 



CHAPTER I. 



" Hinc exaudiri gemitus."* — Virgil. 

groan, the first int-wrench-ment of the siege. — Corn-land grown pasture — i. e., 
past-yow endurance. — A new frog fable. " No sport to you, but death to us." — 
Change not always improvement. A distinction without a difference. — A little 
Latin — but there is a translation at the bottom. — The hay-day of prosperity — ■ 
" over the left." — Up to snuff — and a trifle over. — To ride a-horse-back out and 
drive a horse back home. — A cartf-sequence. Not good. Pleasures of solitude. — 
New e'ven-ing amusements — rolling gravel-walks and shearing lawns. Yerbum 
sop. — Plans for another campaign — to take the field in good earnest. 



Sensitive. This is a hard world, Testy. 

Testy. That is a fact, Sensitive, and besides, a promising 
opening to our first attack on the army of our enemies. We 
have to deal with an immense and obstinate majority of 
mankind, who persist in their dogma that miseries are to 
be valued in proportion to their size rather than to their 
number. 

Sen. Who will be contented, in spite of any and all in- 
ducements to the contrary. 

* Here a groan was heard. 



16 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A groan, the first int-wrench-ment of the siege. 

Tes. "All the world's a stage" — and I won't be con- 
tented ! 

Ned Testy. Unless you can be driver, and take the fare. 

Tes. Those are the blockheads we have to deal with, and 
almost single-handed too ! 

Sen. We are like the one reasonable but unlucky fellow 
on a jury with eleven obstinate companions. But are we not 
doing an injury to the race rather than a benefit % It looks 
like opening a new Pandora's box, this giving a local habita- 
tion and a name to these hitherto unrecognised evils. 

Tes. Not a bit of it ! We cage them up ; so that all may 
see what they have to look out for. It's more like crowding 
the evils back into the box. 

Sen. Except that we unfortunately cannot shut down the 
lid. 

Tes. And, besides, what do we owe to " the race]" 

Ned Tes. One owes no consideration to a race where he's 
won no stake. 

Sen. We shall have earned a stake, Ned — the stake of 
martyrdom — if you start with the deliberate intention of com- 
mitting many such puns. 

Tes. Puns ! Has he been making puns ? Ned, the first 
time I catch you making a pun, I'll punish you by hiring 
some other amanuensis, and deducting his wages out of your 
pocket-money. 

Ned Tes. I shall run no risk of that sort, sir. (Aside to 
the reader.) Because father never would know if it snoioed 
puns unless some one told him. Although I verily believe he 
tvould like to see the whole pun-kin made into one pie, that he 
7night cut them up, yet he makes puns himself sometimes in the 
most blissful unconsciousness. The fates were kind to him in 
that one respect at least. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 17 

Corn-land grown pasture — i. e., jjast-your endurance. 

Tes. We have to prove to the world that the real retribu- 
tive evidences of original sin and total depravity are the 
miseries that go uncounted under the names of bores, nui- 
sances, fatalities, &c. Now let us open the campaign. Shall 
I begin? 

Sen. If you please. Open your budget. 

Ned Tes. 

" 'Tis but a bud-yet, 
'Twill soon burst in bloom." 

Tes. Ay, here they are, biting and stinging, wherever I set 
my finger ! — Well, well ! no matter — to business. Let's begin 
in the country, since^we are here, and tell some of the mis- 
eries of walks, rides, drives, &c, that fools take with the 
fallacious idea that they are enjoying themselves ! 

1. The sole of the shoe torn down in walking, and obliging you to lift 
your foot, and limp along, like a pig in a string ; no knife in your pocket, 
nor house within reach ! 

2. The boot continually taking in gravel ; while, for a time, you try to 
calm your feelings by believing it to be only hard dirt, and vainly hope 
that it will presently relieve you by pulverizing. 

3. Suddenly rousing yourself from the ennui of a solitary walk by strik- 
ing your toe (with a com at the end of it) full and hard against the sharp 
corner of a fixed flint : — pumps. 

Ned Tes. Nay, father, such a kick as that would pay you 
for the pain by driving out the corn : 



em ab radicibus imis 



Expulsam erueret."* — Virg. 
Sen. If you are for corns, listen to me : 



* From the corn-field he eradicates its deepest roots. 



18 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A new frog fable. " No sport to you, but death to us." 

4. Walking all day, in veiy hot weather, in a pair of shoes far too tight 
both in length and breadth. — Corns on every toe. 

Tes. There you beat me, to be sure ; but it is the only 
triumph you will have, and so make the most of it. Beat 
what follows, if you can : 

5. When you have trusted your foot on a frozen rut, the ice proving 
treacherous, and bedding you in slush. 

6. Walking through a boundless field of fresh-ploughed clay land, and 
carrying home, at each foot, an undesired sample of the soil, of about ten 
or twelve pounds weight. 

Ned Tes. Ah ! this is, as Dryden says 
" A trifling sum of misery 
Now added to the foot of thy account !" 

7 Stooping, tearing, floundering, and bleeding your way through a 
boggy, briery swamp, with here and there a rushy pool, which takes you by 
surprise : so that you are more and more entangled and ingulfed as you ad- 
vance, till you are, after all, necessitated to turn back, and encore all your 
sufferings ; and so emerge at last, looking like a half-murdered beggar. 

Ned Tes. 

" Quern circum, limus niger, et deformis arundo, 

tardaque palus inamabilis unda 

Alligat, et novies Sticks interfusa coercent." — Virg. 

8. Walking obliquely up a steep hill, when the ground is what the vul- 
gar call greasy. 

Ned Tes. " Labitur et labetur !" — Slipping and slopping. 

9. Feeling your foot slidder over the back of a toad, which you took 
for a stepping-stone, in your dark evening walk. 

10. Making an involuntary acquisition, in the shape of a snowball in 
winter, or a bit of something sticky in summer, which sticks to your sole 
as the devil might if he got hold of it. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 19 

Change not always improvement. A distinction without a difference. 

Sen. I don't mind that, if it relieves me of itself all at 
once. It is so satisfactory to set your foot down free on the 
ground again, after the encumbrance is gone. But what a 
trial is it to a nervous man to go scraping along over the 
stones, and making his blood run cold, so long that he can 
scarcely tell when the last bit departs ! His imagination feels 
as if it were there, when the eye can detect nothing on the 
boot, painfully upturned for inspection while the owner bal- 
ances himself on the other leg — tottering like a ninepin. 

Tes. After your " something sticky" has seemingly disap- 
peared — 

11. To enter a drawing-room and find out, when too late, that your 
boot has changed its manner of annoyance from sticking, to — smelling 
unpleasantly ! 

12. Or, on the other hand, to step on a bit of fresh orange or melon 
peel, upon which your foot flies off incontinently in a lateral direction, much 
to the perturbation of your centre of gravity. 

Ned Tes. And the gravity of the passers-by as well. 

13. To have these misfortunes happen when you are in a great hurry 
and going along with all your might. 

Tes. Bad enough, sir, bad enough ; but this, and all the 
specimens of bad footing we have yet mentioned, are carpet- 
ing compared with what follows, as you'll soon confess : 

14. While you are out with a walking party, after heavy rains — one 
shoe suddenly sucked off by the boggy clay ; and then, in making a long 
and desperate stretch, which fails, with the hope of recovering it, leaving the 
other in the same predicament ! The second stage of ruin is that of stand- 
ing — or rather tottering — in blank despair, with both feet planted, ankle- 
deep, in the quagmire ! The last (I had almost said the dying) scene of 
the tragedy — that of deliberately cramming first one, and then the other 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



A little Latin — but there is a translation at the bottom. 



clogged, polluted foot into its choked-up shoe, after having scavengered 
your hands and gloves in slaving to drag up each separately out of its 
deep bed, and in this state proceeding on your walk — is too dreadful for 
representation. 

Sen. " O, horrible ! O, horrible ! most horrible !" If, 
however, it may afford you any consolation, under the recol- 
lection of a calamity so dreadful, to hear an accurate descrip- 
tion of it from the master-hand of Tacitus, attend while I 
recite it : " Miscetur operantium clamor — cuncta pariter 
adversa — locus uligine profunda, idem ad gradum instabilis, 
procedentibus lubricus ; corpora neque librare inter undas 

poterant Non vox, et mutui hortatus juvabant : nihil 

strenuus ab ignavo, sapiens a prudenti, consilia a casu differre ; 
cuncta pari violentia involvebantur !" * — and now, my friend, 
let me relieve your mind by a meaner though by no means a 
tolerable misery. 

15. Pushing through the very narrow path of a very long field of 
very high grain, immediately after a very heavy rain: — nankeens. 

1 6. Ploughing up your newly-rolled gravel walk, by walking over, 
or rather sinking into it, after a soaking torrent of rain. 

Sen. Nothing can be more pitiable. But having now suffi- 
ciently denied ourselves with dust and mire, suppose we pass 

* Confusion and clamour prevail among the labouring victims — all 
things conspiring equally against them — the place a deep swamp, treach- 
erous to the foot, and more and more slippery as they advance ; neither 

could they balance their bodies amidst the boggy marsh The voice 

of mutual encouragement was heard in vain : all distinction lost between 
the strenuous and the tardy, the wise and the weak, circumspection and 
casualty; all were indiscriminately involved in the same overpowering 
calamity ! 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 21 

The 7iay-day of prosperity — " over the left." 

to some of the less ignoble miseries of the country. I will 
show you the way : 

17. "While walking with others, in a line, through a narrow path, being 
perpetually addressed by the lady immediately before you, who, although 
she never turns her head in speaking, and a roaring wind from behind flies 
away with eveiy syllable as it is uttered, seems to consider you as pro- 
vokingly stupid for making her repeat her words twenty times over. 

18. The flaccidity of mind with which you attempt to flog yourself up 
into an inclination to work in your garden, for the sake of exercise. 

Tes. Nay, there are worse things about a garden than that, 
I can tell you : 

19. On paying a visit to your garden in the morning for the purpose of 
regaling your eye and nose with the choice ripe fruit with which it had 
abounded the day before, finding that the whole produce of every tree and 
bush has been carefully gathered — in the night ! 

20. The delights of hay-time 1 as follows : — After having cut down 
every foot of grass upon your grounds, on the most solemn assurances of 
the barometer that there is nothing to fear; after having dragged the whole 
neighbourhood for every man, woman, and child, that love or money could 
procure, and thrust a rake or a pitchfork into the hand of every servant 
in your family, from the housekeeper down ; after having long overlooked 
and animated their busy labours, and seen the exuberant produce turned 
and re-turned under a smiling sun, till every blade is as dry as a bone, and 
as sweet as a rose ; after having exultingly counted one rising haycock 
after another, and drawn to the spot every seizable horse and cart, all now 
standing in readiness to carry home the vegetable treasure, as fast as it 
can be piled ; at such a golden moment as this, Mr. Testy, to see volume 
upon volume of black, heavy clouds suddenly rising, and advancing in 
frowning columns from the south-west ; as if the sun had taken half the 
Zodiac— from Leo to Aquarius— at a leap :— they halt— they muster di- 
rectly overhead; at the signal of a thunderclap, they pour down their 
contents with a steady perpendicular discharge, and the assault is continued, 



22 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Up to snuff — and a trifle over. 

without a moment's pause, till eveiy meadow is completely got under, and 
the whole scene of action is a swamp. When the enemy has performed 
his commission by a total defeat of your hopes ; when he has completely 
swept the field, and scattered your whole party in a panic flight, he sud- 
denly breaks up his forces, and quits the ground ; leaving you to comfort 
and amuse yourself, under your loss, by looking at his Colors, in the shape 
of a most beautiful rainbow, which he displays in his rear. 

21. In your evening walk, being closely followed, for half an hour, by 
a large bulldog, (without his master,) who keeps up a stifled growl, with his 
muzzle nuzzling about your calf, as if choosing out the fleshiest bite : — no 
bludgeon. 

22. Losing your way, on foot, at night, in a storm of wind and rain ; 
and this, immediately after leaving a merry fireside. 

23. "While you are laughing, or talking wildly to yourself, in walking, 
suddenly seeing a person steal close by you, who, you are sure, must have 
heard it all ; then, in an agony of shame, making a wretched attempt to 
sing, in a voice as like your talk as possible, in hopes of making your 
hearer think that you had been only singing all the while. 

Tes. A forlorn hope, indeed ! — if / had been your hearer, 
I should have said, by way of relieving your embarrassment, 
" Si loqueris, cantas ; si cantas, cantas male." — If you would 
speak, you sing ; if it's singing you are, you sing vilely. 

24. In attempting to spring carelessly, with the help of one hand, over 
a five-barred gate, by way of showing your activity to a party of ladies 
behind you, (whom you affect not to have observed,) blundering upon your 
nose on the other side. 

25. In walking out to dinner, clean and smart, becoming hot with your 
exercise, the consciousness of which makes you still hotter, so that on ar- 
riving, too late to repair yourself, you are obliged to sit down to table with 
a large party, (each of whom is clean and fresh,) with plastered hair, red 
varnished face, <fcc., &c. 

26. Venturing upon a pinch of snuff in the open air, a sudden puff of 
wind emptying your box into your eyes, the moment you open it. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 23 

To ride a-horse-back out and drive a horse back borne. 

27. In returning from a long, hot ride, being overtaken on a common, 
many miles from home, by a torrent of rain, which so completely drenches 
your heated body, that you are obliged, for the preservation of your life, to 
stop at some lone, mean, public house, undress, and get between the blan- 
kets, while your clothes are drying : then, after you have lain awake like a 
fool for a couple of hours, doing nothing, in the busy part of the day, find- 
ing, when you have re-dressed yourself, the rain increasing, night coming on, 
and no messenger to be had by whom to send word to your anxious friends, 
that you must remain where you are all night. 

28. On a stubborn horse, coming to a no less stubborn gate, when you 
have either no hooked stick, or one with so gentle a curve that it lets go 
its hold as soon as it has taken it ; so that you must at last resolve to dis- 
mount, though you well know that your horse will afterwards keep you 
dancing for an hour on one leg, with the other in the stirrup, before he will 
suffer you to remount him. Or, 

29. To consider it prudent not to remount, but to boi'row a wagon 
and harness, even at the risk of the jeers of those who witnessed your outset. 

30. Improving your coachmanship by driving an unbroken horse 
through a rugged, narrow lane, in which the ruts refuse to fit your wheels, 
and yet there is no room to quarter. 

31. An overturn — the natural consequence of a natural cause. 

Ned Tes. The driver must "be a natural, too — natural 
born, as the country people say. 

32. Attending a sale, from a great distance, for the sole purpose of bid- 
ding for an article, which, on your arrival, you are told has just been 
knocked down for nothing. 

33. After having sent from the other end of the state to the library for 
a quantity of well-chosen books, all particularly named, receiving in return, 
six months afterwards, a cargo of novels, of their own choice, with such 
titles as " Delicate Sensibility," " Disguises of the Heart,*' " Errors of Tender- 
ness," <fec, <fec. Then, if you venture, in despair, on a few pages, being edi- 
fied in the margin by such pencilled commentaries as the following : " I quite 
agree in this sentiment." " How frequently do we find this to be the case 



24 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A cart-sequence. Not good. Pleasures of solitude. 

in real life !" — " But why did she let him have the letter ?" &c, &c. ; con- 
cluded by the reader's general decision upon the merits of the book, 
stamped in one oracular sentence ; for example, " This is a very good 
novel ;" or, (to the horror and confusion of the author, if he should ever 
hear of the critique,) " What execrable stuff I" 

Tes. Nay, you well deserve this part of your misery for 
looking into such trash — 

" I, quaeso, et tristes illos depone libellos," 
Nee lege " quod quaevis nosse puella velit." 

/ will give you a country misery, from which there is not a 
whit less wear and tear to the nerves, and where you have no 
possible means of escape : — judge for yourself. 

34. Following on horseback a slow cart through an endless, narrow 
lane, at sunset, when you are already too late, and want all the help of your 
eyes, as well as of your horse's feet, to carry you safe through the rest of 
your unknown way. 

Sen. Very distressing, I allow ; but I will show you that 
the end of a journey may be still worse than the journey 
itself : 

35. After having arrived at home, completely exhausted by a long jour- 
ney, and delightfully diffused yourself on the sofa for the rest of the even- 
ing — (as you fondly suppose)— being dragged out again, within a quarter 
of an hour, to take a long walk with a few friends, who are " obliged to 
go," but who " cannot bear to part with you so soon" — the party chiefly 
consisting of ladies, to whom you are, on every account, ashamed to plead 
fatigue as an excuse for remaining at home. 

36. In a very solitary situation— after having sent some miles off for a 
remarkably clever carpenter, whom you have particularly entreated to 
come himself, for the purpose of doing a variety of jobs that require both 
a nice hand and a contriving head — seeing enter, in his stead, a drivelling 
dormouse, who just knows a hammer from a nail. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 25 

New e^en-ing amusements — rolling gravel-walks and shearing lawns. Verbum sap. 

37. Passing the worst part of a rainy winter in a country so inveter- 
ately miry as to imprison you within your own premises, so that, by way of 
exercise and to keep yourself alive, you take to rolling the gravel-walks, 
though already quite smooth ; cutting wood, though you have more logs 
than enough ; working the dumb-bells, or some such irrational exertions. 

38. Residing at a solitary place, where the return of the butcher, and 
the delivery of parcels, letters, &c, is so irregular and uncertain, that you 
are obliged to get at all the necessaries of life by stratagem. 

39. While deeply, delightfully, and, as you hope, safely, engaged at home 
in the morning — being suddenly surprised by an inroad from a party of 
the starched, stupid, cold, idle natives of a neighbouring country town, who 
lay a formal siege (by sap) to your leisure, which they cany on for at 
least two hours in almost total silence — 

" Nothing there is to come, and nothing past ; 
"But an eternal Now does ever last !" 

40. During the last hour, they alternately tantalize and torment you, 
by seeming (but only seeming) to go, which they are induced to do at last 
only by the approach of a fresh detachment of the enemy, whom they 
descry at your castle gate, and to whose custody they commit you, while 
they pursue their own scouring excursions upon the other peaceful inhabit- 
ants of the district. 

Tes. Well, Sensitive, I must confess your last " groan" is 
louder than any that has yet burst from either of us. 

Sen. Liberally said, sir : it is bad enough, to be sure, 
though your quagmire scene runs it very close : a sufficient 
number, indeed, has been produced on both sides to silence 
the boldest of our enemies ; and yet this, as you say, is 
" rural felicity !" But let us not triumph before a victory ; 
they will tell us, I doubt not, that we have contemplated the 
country but on one side. We have pretty well established 
our main point, to be sure, viz. : that country walks, rides, 
&c, &c, are not exactly the roads to earthly happiness — 

2 



26 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Plans for another campaign — to take the field in good earnest. 

nothing but the ghost of an idiot could think they are ; — but 
they will, doubtless, exultingly produce a higher class of rural 
enjoyments, under the names of sports, games, and exercises ; 
and if they should superadd the domestic amusements of re- 
tirement, they will consider the country as completely set 
upon its legs again. 

Tes. Never fear. We will beat them, not only out of the 
field, but out of the house, too. 

Ned Tes. (aside.) How unfeeling ! Making game of the 
miseries of our fellow-men. Making miseries of their games 
amounts to the same thing. 

Sen. Well, then we'll consider it decided. The subject 
of country sports and amusements, in parliamentary phrase, 




HAS THE FLOOR. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 27 

Miseries of games, sports, &c. Of domestic recreations. 



CHAPTEK II. 

Miseries of games, sports, &c. Of domestic recreations. — New-fashioned geometry. 
A one-line try-angle. Eobin' the dead. — Un-atm-iable fortune ! Childish 
troubles — no ease but miser-ies. — Infancy ! In fancy I see thy speechless trials ! 
• — Attacks on dogs are a tax on the feelings of their masters. — The affecting 
history of poor watch. Andrew McCann — " absent, but not forgotten." — Pleas- 
ures of boating. " 0, what a row," &c. — A chance for a complicated pun about 
"muslin' the ox that treadeth out the com.''' — A temperance maxim. The 
social bowl is a bad game to make ten-strikes in. — Whist — a deal of trouble, and 
"De'il a bit of pleasure." — The arts. "Music hath (c) harms." Drawing. A 
point vs. disappoint. — An unwelcome mental guest is a riddle which is not 
guessed. — Riddles in the old sense, i. e., sieves — to strain the faculties. — Finish 
of " Miseries Chap. 2d." (They've finished many a chap besides !) 

Tes. Well, sir, we meet still more in heart, I trust, than 
we parted. As we have taken in a great part both of sum- 
mer and winter for our amusements, we shall hardly fail to 
find, on comparing notes, that our cause has realized a great 
deal of strength, both in and out of doors. 

Sen. Yes, truly, my dear friend ; I, for my part, have 
been sporting, and dancing, and singing, with tears in my 
eyes, ever since we parted ; and have brought you a pocket- 
ful of pains, composed entirely of pleasures ! 

Tes. I will match you, depend upon 't — but you shall 
judge for yourself. You may be prepared, indeed, for my 
first groan, by my limping gait, and this bewitching swathe 
about my head ; it is but three days since it happened ; and 
thus it goes : 

1. In skating — slipping in such a manner that your legs start off into 
the unaccommodating posture of a pair of shears loose on the pivot, from 



28 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



New-fashioned geometry. A one-line try-mgle. Eobin 1 the dead. 

which, however, you are soon relieved by tumbling forwards on your 
nose, or backwards on your skull. Also, learning to cut the outside edge 
on skates that have no edge to cut with : — ice very rugged. 

2. To come down on your right knee in such a style as to have to be 
earned home, with a pleasant subject of contemplation to pass away the 
time, viz.: the probability of losing your knee-joint through a white 
swelling 1 

Ned Tes. " Hie O, limb, meminisse juvabit." * 

3. Angling for ten or twelve hours, without a bite, though perpetually 

tantalized with nibbles ; or, 
when you have hooked a fine, 
large specimen, seeing him 
take French leave, at the mo- 
ment when you are courteous- 
ly showing him his nearest 
way to the bank. Or, on the 
other hand, after falling asleep 
and letting your tackle repose 
in the mud for an indefinite 
time, to wake and haul up 
with the conviction that you 
had caught an eel, and receive 
a practical illustration of the 
old adage — 
there's mant a slip (-rER), etc. — You had only caught — a cold! 

4. On springing, at the right distance, the only covey you have seen, at 
the end of a long day's fag — flash in the pan. 

5. Having got up before daylight, with the most superhuman virtue, to 
shoot quail to bring down something, after getting wet with dew up to 
your middle, and, on picking it up, to find it nothing but a poor red- 
breast, 

* " Hie olim meminisse juvabit." — Virg. 
Pleasing will this be hereafter to look back on. 




THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 29 

TTn-a?'m-iable fortune ! Childish troubles — no ease but miser-ies. 

Ned Tes. Although you had seen it quail before your 
attack. 

6. Then to be confined to your bed, in a miserable country tavern* 
with the natural consequences of your exposure. 

Ned Tes. Probably a room-attic affliction. One which a 
deio regard for health would have prevented. 

7. In hunting, while you are leading the field, and just running in upon 
the fox, with the brush full in your hopes, being suddenly left in the lurch, 
or, in other words, in the ditch. 

Ned Tes. A slight change — from heading the field, to 
head in the field. 

8. In archery — the string of your bow snapping at the moment when 
you have made sure of your aim. 

Sen. But let us have done with what are vulgarly called 
" out-door amusements." One groan for every principal field- 
sport may serve for a sample : — sportsmen could produce a 
thousand more, but all men are not sportsmen ; and we, you 
know, have to do only with general miseries — the common 
currency of human existence. 

Tes. Common, do you call it? Humph! — if this is the 
common currency, I can only say that, from some twist in 
our horoscopes, you and I seem to have pocketed all the 
bogus pieces. By the by, I have not yet done with the open 
air and its amusements. You must know that I have col- 
lected from my youngest boy Tom, now at home for the 
holidays, a few " school miseries," and so put them into my 
pile. I was pleased at the circumstance, as it served to show 
that even boyhood, the happiest period of man's life, and 
school-days, which we are apt to look upon as the happiest 



30 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Infancy ! In fancy I see thy speechless trials ! 

part of that happiest time, are by no means exempt from the 
general tax upon living and breathing ; nay, even my last lit- 
tle one told me half an hour ago, as plain as a baby could 
speak it, of an infantine misery, viz. : 

9. A dry M><^-nurse ! 

10. Waking in a bitter winter morning, with the recollection that you 
are immediately to get up by candlelight, out of your snug, warm bed, to , 
shiver out to school through the snow, for the purpose of being flogged as 
soon as you arrive. 

Tes. Eh, Sensitive % I don't think the blackest beard 
among us can go beyond that. 

11. Seeing the boy who is next above you flogged for a recitation which 
you know you cannot say even half so well as he did 

12. At cricket — after a long and hard service of watching out — bowled 
out at the first ball. Likewise, cricket on very sloppy ground, so that 
your hard ball presently becomes muddy, sappy, and rotten ; a jailing 
bat ; a right-hand bat for a left-handed player ; a hat, vice stumps. 

13. Winding up a top badly grooved, so that the string bunches down 
over the peg, and, on your attempt to peg it down into the ring, " volat 
vi fervidus axis ;" i. e., it flies into the eye of a play-fellow. 

14. Your hoop breaking, and then trundling lame, and perpetually trip- 
ping you up, as you boggle along with it ; the other boys, with good hoops, 
leaving you miles behind. 

15. Being obliged to take a severe licking from a boy twice as big, 
but not half so brave as yourself ; then flogged for fighting, because you 
at first aimed one blow, which, however, did not reach the long-armed 
rascal. 

16. At dinner — the meat lasting only as low down as to the boy im- 
mediately above you : — you are too stout to eat bread, and so go starved 
and broken-hearted into school. 

IT. Staying in on a whole holiday for another boy's fault, falsely 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 31 

Attacks on dogs are a tax on the feelings of their masters. 

charged upon yourself : — very fine day, and the distant noise of all the 
other boys at play continually in your ears, as you mope in the house. 

Ned Tes. Of course, / cannot remember any childish 
miseries, it is so long since I could experience any. But I 
have set down a few young-manly contretemps, which I can 
give you if you wish. 

Tes. You always were rather anxious to show yourself, 
you know, Ned. I am afraid you cannot add much, unless 
you throw in yourself as a concentrated misery. However, 
we will see what we shall see. 

Ned Tes. I do not hesitate to exclaim with the Latins — 

" Pa, see me, too !" * 

Don't be afraid. Some people can do some things as well as 
others. 

If you have any thing of a fancy for dogs — 

18. To be obliged to witness an assault of the dog-killers on a poor, 
unoffending cur, who has unwittingly strayed out of his boundaries. 

Especially if he be a favourite of your own, and you 
arrive too late to save him, and only in time to have him die, 
licking the hand that has so often licked him! 

Tes. I never happened to be present when that occurred. 

Ned Tes. That never happened to a cur when you were 
present, you mean. 

Sen. I never will have a dog in my house again as long as 
I live — it is such agony to lose one. We buried one with 
all the honours, the other day, in the presence of " the family 
and friends of the family." 

Ned Tes. Dogberrys are not uncommon phenomena. As 

* Parce metu. — Spare your fears. 



32 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The affecting history of poor watch. Andrew McCann — " absent, but not forgotten." 

a particular mark of respect, you may do as a lot of disap- 
pointed heirs have been known to do on the death of their 
rich relation and their hopes. 

Sen. How is that % 

Ned Tes. Set up a railing round his grave. 

Sen. Better than your average. Have you got through 
your juvenile miseries'? 

Ned Tes. No. Here's another — a bit of personal ex- 
perience : 

19. To remember, just after getting underway for a day's sailing with 
a large party, that you had forgotten to wind your watch — your first watch 
— that you had resolved never to let run down, and that you had wound 
up every morning for ten months 1 You try every key in the party with 
a desperate and fallacious hope, trying to wind the watch while the rest 
are trying to watch the wind. Instead of a day of pleasure, you feel as 
if you were waiting for the death of a pet dog. You can't forget it ; but 
as it goes on tick, tick, tick — tick, to the last possible second, you go down 
to the hold and positively cry. 

Tes. You deserved it. Who ever heard of winding a 
watch in the morning 1 

Sen. I've thought of that, Testy, and concluded that the 
morning was the proper time. First ; you get up much more 
regularly, as to time, than you go to bed. Second ; if, by 
chance, you forget it in the morning, there is a possibility of 
rectifying it, whereas no man ever waked up in the night to 
wind his watch. Third ; the habit serves to help us remem- 
ber to take it out from under the pillow, and there is no 
reminder necessary to keep us from forgetting to take it off 
when we undress. 

Ned Tes. Unless it were some one like "Andrew McCann, 
the absent man." 

Tes. Why, Ned — what about him ? 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 33 

Pleasures of boating. " 0, what a row" &c. 

Ned Tes. He put his watch to bed and tried to wind him- 
self up. He was accustomed to set his watch forward every 
night, and, finding that he could only be set backward, and 
being puzzled to tell which of his hands was the minute hand, 
combined to recall his sense of their individuality. The 
dilemma, I think, he must have taken by several homs, and 
pretty strong ones, too. 

Sen. Ned, I've seen that story in a newspaper ; but, un- 
less I'm much mistaken, it's grown a full size since then. 

Ned Tes. {confused.) I may have added a little. But full- 
grown sighs or full size groans, would either be appropriate 
to your collection of miseries. Your aspersion on my cor- 
rectness reminds me of another school annoyance. 

20. Telling a stoiy to a circle of boys who shortly interrupt you to 
tell you the point, having listened patiently so far for the sake of laughing 
at you for telling over again the same identical story (excepting a few ad- 
ditions) that you had told them before. 

Tes. Ned's boating story reminds me of a little circum- 
stance that I think he would quite as lieve I should forget. 

21. To be deceived, bamboozled, humbugged, to "just take a sail 
round, rather than get up the horses to go two miles." 

You know those were your very words, Ned. We found 
the boat high and dry on land 

Ned Tes. But then, you know, father, she made up for it 
by being half full of water. 

Tes. Very true, you scamp ; and in launching and baling 
began the destruction of my dinner-party getting up, which 
had been " regardless of expense." 

22. The wind dies away, and we find ourselves perfectly stationary, 
and reduced to the necessity of paddling painfully ashore with a piece of 

2* 



34 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A chance for a complicated pun about "muslin? the ox that treadeth out the com.'''' 

a seat, having no oars except one, of which the whole flat part was gone, 
leaving only the handle — 

Ned Tes. Oar-y rotundo. 

23. Which was rather worse than none at all. Then, to arrive at last, 
and find, sitting at table, a cool, fresh-looking party of well-dressed peo- 
ple — your clothes splashed with bilge-water; your nose showing small 
particles of white cuticle, relieved against a brick-red ground ; and with 
bands so blistered, that you can scarcely feed yourself 1 

Ned Tes. It's no bliss to know blisters. 

24. Blundering in the figure all the way through a German cotillion, 
with a charming partner, to whom you are a perfect stranger ; and who, 
consequently, knows nothing of you but your awkwardness. 

Tes. That offence may be forgiven, however — not so the 
following : 

25. Entering into the figure of a dance with so much spirit, as to force 
your leg and foot through the muslin drapery of your fail- partner, and 
stamp on her delicate pedestal within. 

Sen. There I feel for you, indeed ! 

26. The plagues of that complicated evolution called " right and left," 
from the awkwardness of some, and the inattention of others. 



Ned Tes. 



" Palantes error certo de tramite pellit ; 
Ille sinistrosum, hie dextrorsum abit" — Hor. 



2*7. Being compelled to shift your steps at eveiy instant by the sleepy, 
ignorant, or drunken blunders of your musicians 

Ned Tes. 

" Tempora rnutantur, et nos mutamur in illis." * 

* '• Times change, and we change with them." 



TEE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 35 

A temperance maxim. The social bowl is a bad game to make ten-strikes in. 

Sen. I will now give you a ball-room " groan," with which 
nothing in Holbein's "Dance of Death" can stand a moment's 
comparison : 

28. When you have imprudently cooled yourself with a glass of ice 
after dancing very violently, being immediately told by a medical friend 
that you have no chance for your life but by continuing the exercise with 
all your might ; — then, the state of horror in which you suddenly ciy out 
for "Go to the devil and shake yourself," or any other such frolicsome 
tune, and the heart-sinking apprehensions under which you instantly tear 
down the dance, and keep rousing all the rest of the couples, who, having 
taken no ice, can afford to move with less spirit 

29. To wait, fretting and fuming, for some favourite dance, while the 
old fogies, forming the majority of the company, dig away at their wretched 
cotillions, &c, one set forming as soon as another is done. 

30. Tripping on the light fantastic toe — of your partner. 

Ned Tes. Either of those last must be dreadful to a 
dancer of good caperbilities. 

Sen. So much for dancing. Let us examine a few more 
domestic recreations. "Will billiards give happiness 1 

Tes. I'll tell you : 

31. When your adversary lacks but one of being out, to make a splen- 
did double-stroke that would win you the game, but that your own ball 
pockets itself after all. 

Ned Tes. In bowling, at a watering-place, before a party 
of ladies, in a tremendous effort to show off — 

32. To make a twelve-strike, i.e., knock down the ten pins, yourself, 
and the boy ! 

Sen. Ah, ha ! There is a thing or two that trench on per- 
sonal vanity ; and who is there to whom they are without 
significance % Who is there, in all humanity, from the little 



36 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

"Whist— a deal of trouble, and "De'iZ a bit of pleasure." 

plague that just knows it is " Me ! Me !" he sees in the glass, 
up to the old fellow who thinks it is a secret that he wears a 
wig, and tries to be sure no one is looking whenever he takes 
off his hat ! 

33. Missing your cue at every stroke — (" totum nee pertulit ictum") — 
and this when you are particularly ambitious of showing your play. 

Ned Tes. Miss Q. is the least agreeable acquaintance 
among the misses. 

34. At the game of commerce, losing your life in fishing — for aces, 
when you had hooked two, and the third had several times nibbled at 
your bait. 

35. When there is a very rich pool, and you have outlived all the 
players but one, he having gone up twice, and you not once — losing all 
your three lives running. 

Tes. Nay, commerce is the best game upon the cards ; for 
you may get yourself released whenever you please. What 
say you to the case of a wretch w r ho detests cards, and whist 
above all, at which he plays vilely. Under these circum- 
stances, I say, what think you of 

36. Being compelled, by the want of a substitute, to sit down again, 
as you are stealing away, to a fourth or fifth rubber, with an Argus — in 
the shape of a captious, eager, skilful elderly spinster — for your new 
partner ? 

37. In shuffling the cards — your party all strangers — squashing them 
together, breaking their edges, and showering them in all directions, so as 
to make you long for a trap-door to open under your feet. 

38. A pack of cards which stick so abominably in dealing, that you 
unavoidably throw out three or four at once, and so lose your time, your 
patience, and the deal. 

39. Being accompanied by a player or singer, who is always at least 
a bar behind or before you. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 37 

The arts. "Music hath (c) harms." Drawing. A point vs. disappoint. 

Ned Tes. There is a bar to the harmony, but no harmony 
to the bar. 

40. To listen to a set of badly-played chimes — Old Hundred altered, 
because there are but eight bells to play it with. A " triple bob major" 
rung as if it were the " passing bell." 

Ned Tes. In that case, every bar is a toll-bar. 

41. While accompanying another on the Jlute, being distanced in a 
quick passage by having to turn over in the middle of a bar. 

Ned Tes. 

" And panting time toil'd after him in vain." — Johns. 

42. Attempting, by desire, to play on the pianoforte, while your fingers 
are all chained up by the frost 

43. In fiddling — a greasy bow ; or a string, the last you have of the 
number, snapping in the middle of a passage which you were just discov- 
ering the proper method of fingering. 

Sen. No, sir, music will never do. Drawing is, at least, 
a quieter enemy ; but that it is an enemy, we shall easily 
make appear. 

Tes. Not so fast, sir ; I have another musical misery in 
store. 

44. After waiting an hour for a friend's cremona, for which you had 
sent your servant, seeing it at length brought in by him — in fragments. 

Ned Tes. 

" Heu, prisca^cfes /" 

Sen. Nay, young gentleman, if you are to quote so, you 
may as well throw in " Nusquam tuta fides" as you, sir, (to 
old Testy,) ought to have remembered in proper time. 

45. Hitching your knife in the gritty flaws of a black-lead pencil so as 
to spoil its edge, without gaining your point : — repeatedly breaking said 



38 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

An unwelcome mental guest is a riddle which is not guessed. 

point in the operation of cutting it ; or, when you seem to have succeeded, 
finding that your pencil only scratches the paper on which you mean to 
draw. 

46. After having nearly completed a drawing of a head, on which you 
have long been working very laboriously, leaving the room for a moment, 
and finding, on your return, that a sudden puff of wind, as you opened the 
door, has conveyed it into the fire, which is devouring the last corner of 
the paper. 

47. In fitting a drawing to its frame, becoming so tired of your own 
timidity in paring the paper too little, as to spoil all by one rash sliver. 

48. Rubbing Indian-ink or cake colours in a very smooth saucer. (Or, 
what is far worse than this — nay, is perhaps the very mightiest of all the 
mighty miseries we are now recording, or shall ever record- ) 

49. As you draw — to be maddened, through your whole work, with 
inveterate greasiness in your pencils, colours, or paper — you cannot possi- 
bly discover which — so that what you have taken up with your brush 
keeps coyly flying from the spot to which you would apply it. 

Ned Tes. 

" nee color 

Certa sede manet." — Hon. 

Tes. So much for the Fine Arts ! One misery more, and 
I have done for the present. 

50. Exhausting your faculties for a whole evening together in vain en- 
deavours to guess at a riddle, conundrum, (fee, though you are assured, all 
the time, that it is as easy as the a, b, c. 

Tes. For my own part, the confounded riddle with which 
I have just wound up my accounts, has considerably short- 
ened my search after other torments ; for ever since it was 
proposed to me, a full month ago, I have lost both my rest 
and my appetite, and neglected almost every other concern 
in trying to find it out — all to no purpose. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 39 

Biddies in the old sense, i. e., sieves — to strain the faculties. 

I have done double duty besides. First, to make out 
what the answer could be, and then, when the idiot had told 
it to me, to find what possible sense or connection it had with 
the question ! 

Ned Tes. (aside to the reader.) I was the idiot in question. 
The riddle was : " Why should not the Latin ' Me Ipse'' be con- 
sidered a strong expression?'''' "Because it only takes ' T* to 
make ' Me Tipse /'" 

Sen. Nay, let it pass ; you and I have neither time nor 
tranquillity for studying riddles. Besides, sir, life itself — ac- 
cording to our views of it — is one great enigma ; and, like the 
other famous enigma of old, is guarded by not one, but a 
thousand sphinxes, in the shape of "miseries," which, like their 
predecessor, keep tearing us to pieces all the time that we are 
labouring in vain for the solution. Be quiet, then, for a mo- 
ment, while I shape out other employment for us. It will 
not be denied, I trust, that we have now given the cause of 
the country a fair hearing ; but the town, remember, will be 
thought to have at least an equal right to be put upon its 
trial, and the rather, as men, having made it themselves, will 
be naturally interested by the vanity of workmen in its 
defence. 

Tes. So be it. " IS Tan made the town," and we will pat- 
ronize the manufactured article, skipping over the whole vil- 
lage tribe as a wretched nondescript, to be attributed to 
neither — not made at all, in fact. A sort of accidental spon- 
taneous production. 

Sen. A collection of people not too large for every body 
to know all about every body else, yet not large enough 
for any selection of associates ; large enough to preclude 
mutual interest, yet small enough for universal curiosity, is 
a despicable state of existence ! We will treat fearlessly 



40 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Finish of " Miseries Chap. 2d.' 1 (They've finished many a chap besides 1) 

of city and country, but leave the village to the imagina- 
tion. 

Ned Tes. Given, the extremes to find the mean. 

Sen. Capital, Ned, for once ! The mean verily ! not even 
worthy of being recorded ! 

Tes. Very well. Chapter third will resume the same sub- 
ject in another phase. 

Ned Tes. As one is sure to find in the middle of any inter- 
esting story in an old magazine — 




THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 41 

Miseries of cities — noisome and noisy. 



CHAPTEE III. 

Miseries of cities — noisome and noisy. — 'Ere's a noise annoys the ears. — Mutual 
awkwardness, i. e., awkwardness that makes you all mute. — The difficulty of mak- 
ing some things come to pass. — Wakefulness. "We only find oblivion when we 
wish — to be remembered ! — (7a&-bage, in the tailor sense. A fare presumption. — 
Flambeaux, i. e., fiery young gentlemen. — A new po(l)ker. A toss-up for choice 
of partners. — " Voices of the night." A feline misery, and a feelin' description of 
it. — When may a story be said to be " going the rounds" ? — When the bricks it 
was built of are being brought down a ladder. — The folly of using an income for 
amusing a nincom. — Theatres, &c. Places of public abusement. — "Going to 
ballet-hack' 1 ' 1 not so easy for a common man as for a fool. — The misery of condol- 
ence. — Is it a bad box to have no box at all ? — The close of the drama. 

Tes. Welcome to New York, friend Sensitive ! and still 
more welcome to this quiet room — can you hear me ] 

Sen. If J cannot, this constant and cheerful noise of carts 
and stages, which is said by some to favor conversation, will 
help me out, I suppose. 

Tes. If a man must be stunned before he can hear, the 
deaf should lose no time in coming up to here! But how 
long have you been in this elysium of brick and mortar ? — 
and what have you seen % 

Sen. Seen !— I am so full of what I have heard, that I 
hardly know ; for, of all my organs, my ear, I think, torments 
me most ; and yet, I beg pardon of my nose, which, in New 
York, seems still more earnestly bent on my destruction. 

Tes. I give you joy, however, for having found out that ; 
there is some comfort in knowing which of your five servants 
is least busy in plotting against its master. As to me, the 
conspiracy is so nicely balanced among them, that I would 



42 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

'Ere's a noise annoys the ears. 

give half a dime to "be able to determine the ringleader. All 
I know is, that whenever they may finish me, there will be 
some of my blood at each of their doors. But you seemed 
just now as if you were going to be very eloquent upon 
noises in particular. Any thing much worse than usual in that 
line] 

Sen. O, yes, if possible. In an evil hour I lately changed 
lodgings, to escape from a brazier at the next door, who 
counted his profits so very distinctly upon the drums of my 
ears, that not thinking myself indemnified by the value of the 
intelligence for the loss of my hearing, I took wing at a mo- 
ment's warning ; the only consequence, however, has been 
that of exchanging one old enemy for a thousand new ones. 
What is a single brazier to a legion of brazen throats 1 But 
I anticipate — it is time to go to business, and I will lead the 
way, if you please, with a " misery" which will too fully an- 
swer your last question. (Sensitive produces his memoranda 
and reads:) 

1. "While you are harmlessly reading or writing in a room which fronts 
the street, being compelled to undergo a savage jargon of yells, bells, and 
screams : — 

" Bombalio, clangor, stridor, tarantantara, murmur I" — 
Ash-carmen, rag-carmen, charcoal-carmen 

Ned Tes. Carmen lamentabile, triste, lugubre 

Newsboys, ddssors-grinders, or, to cap the climax, organ-grinders ! 

Ned Tes. Sharpeners of the organ of hearing, these last. 

2. You have, all the while, no interest whatever in the uproar, ex- 
cept in the character of a sufferer. For even if you were anxious to buy 
what they are anxious to sell, you would be prevented by your incapabil- 
ity of acquiring even a smattering of the language in which their goods 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 43 

Mutual awkwardness, i. e., awkwardness that makes you all mute. 

are uttered. And thus is a new misery struck out for you, from your in- 
dignation at their distorted ingenuity in devising stratagems for their own 
ruin, which must be the direct consequence of their unintelligibihty. 

3. After walking in a great hurry to a place on very urgent business, 
by what you think a shorter cut, and supposing that you are just arriving 
at the door you want — "No thoroughfare" 

Sen. Not to mention the misery of turning back, splashing 
along at full speed, and fighting your way through the crowd ; 
and all this, in order to go the longest way round, and be too 
late at last ! 

4. Stopping in the street to address a person whom you know rather 
too well to pass him without speaking, and yet not quite well enough to 
have a word to say to him — he feeling himself in the same dilemma — so 
that, after each has asked and answered the question, "How do you do, 
sir ?" you stand silently face to face, apropos to nothing, during a minute, 
and then part in a transport of awkwardness. 

5. Stumbling through New York streets in pumps (and the winter,) 
over hills of filthy snow, in the beginning of a great thaw, and occasionally 
passing over a wide, floated crossing, closely accompanied by a hopping 
sweeper, who whining begs at you all the way : — no penny. 

6. A bad Sunday in the city. 

7. Walking side by side with a cart containing a million of iron bars, 
which you must outbray, if you can, in order to make your companion 
hear a word you have further to say upon the subject you were earnestly 
discussing before you were joined by this infernal article of commerce. 

8. "While you are peaceably reading your paper at a coffee-house, two 
friends, perfect strangers to you, squatting themselves down at your right 
and left hand, and talking across you for an hour, over their private con- 
cerns. 

9. While on a short visit on business — the hurry and ferment, the 
crossing and jostling, the missing and marring, which incessantly happen 
among all your engagements, purposes, and promises, both of business and 



44 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The difficulty of making some things come to pass. 

pleasure, at home and abroad, from morning till midnight — obstacles 
equally perverse, unexpected, unaccountable, innumerable, and intolerable, 
springing up like mushrooms, through eveiy step of your progress. Then, 
when you are at last leaving, on asking yourself the question whether 
any thing has been neglected or forgotten, receiving for answer — " Almost 
every thing !" 

10. A.s you are walking with your charmer, meeting a drunken sailor, 
who, as he staggers by you, ejects his reserve of tobacco against the lady's 
drapery. 

Now, is not this too much, sir ? 

Ned Tes. Yes, that's exactly what it is ; and therefore you 
should have cried out in time — 

" Ne quid nigh miss /" 

11. "Walking briskly forwards, while you are looking backwards, and 
so advancing towards another passenger, who is doing the same ; then, 
meeting with the shock of two battering-rams, which drives your whole 
stock of breath out of your body with the groan of a pavior : 



" ruinam 



Dant sonitu ingentem, perfractaque .... 
Pectora pectoribus rumpunt." * 

At length, after a mutual burst of execrations, you each move for several 
minutes from side to side, with the same motion, in endeavouring to 
pass on. 

12. In going out to dinner, (already too late,) your carriage delayed 
by a jam of coaches — 

Ned Tes. 

Jam, jamque magis cunctantem ! 

Which choke up the whole street, and allow you at least an hour* more 
than you require to sharpen your wits for table talk. 

* " Breast against breast, with ruinous assault 
And deaf ning shock, they come." 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 45 

Wakefulness. "We only find oblivion when we wish — to be remembered ! 

Ned Tes. You went to meat with friends — you did meet 
with obstructions ! 

1 3. On your entrance at a formal dinner party — in reaching up your 
hat to a high peg in the hall, bursting your coat, from the arm-hole to the 
pocket 

Tes. Aye — that comes of "appetens nimis ardua," you 
see. 

14. On leaving the house, at which you have been visiting, finding that 
a rascal has taken your new hat, and left you his old one ; which, on the 
one hand, either cuts to your skull, if you press it down, or barely perches 
on the tip of your head if you do not; or, on the other hand, -wabbles over 
your eyes and ears, and keeps bobbing on your nose ; to say nothing of 
wearing another man's hat, even if it fitted like a glove. 

15. At night, after having long lain awake, nervous and unwell, with an 
ardent desire to know the hour, and the state of the weather, being, at last, 
delighted by hearing the watchman begin his cry, from which, however, he 
allows you to extract no more information than " past — clock — morning !" 
Then, after impatiently fingering through another hour for the sound of 
your own clock, (which had before been roared down by the watchman,) 
being roused to listen by its preparatory click and purr, followed by one 
stroke, which you are to make the most of, the rest being cut short by a 
violent fit of coughing, with which you are seized on the instant. 

16. In attempting to pay money in the street — emptying your purse 
into the kennel — the wind taking care of all the paper money. 

Ned Tes. 

" The trembling notes ascend the sky !" — Alex Feast. 

17. Standing off and on in the street, for half an hour, (though in the 
utmost haste,) while the friend with whom you are walking talks to his 
friend, whom you meet, and to whose conversation you are delicately 
doubtful whether you ought to be a party. 

18. The smintermitting fever into which you are thrown by being 
obliged to linger, the whole morning long, amongst a crew of "greasy 



46 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Ca&-bage, in the tailor sense. A fare presumption. 

rogues,'' in the outer room of a public office, from which you are called out 
the last, if, indeed, you are called out at all ! 

19. Chasing your hat, (just blown off in a high wind,) through a muddy 
street — a fresh gust always whisking it away at the moment of seizing it ; 
when you have at last caught it, deliberately putting it on, with all its sins 
upon your head, amidst the jeers of the populace. 

20. Going to the House of Representatives, in high expectation of an 
animated debate ; and after standing, like an idiot, five hours in the lobby, 
and sitting five more in the gallery — no business done ! Also, being re- 
peatedly and roughly turned out of the gallery (like a dirty dog out of a 
parlor) on motions for executive session, or something else you don't under- 
stand ; and as often shifted, on your return, to a worse place than you had 
before. 

21. Running the gauntlet through South street, from Fulton to White- 
hall. 

22. Ditto through Fulton market, in the dog-days, the odors of the 
meat acting as a thermometer to the nose. 

23. Accosting a person in the street with the utmost familiarity, shak- 
ing him long and cordially by the hand, &c, and at length disco vering by 
his cold (or, if he is a fool, angry) stare, that he is not the man you took 
him for. 

Sen. Or, — what is a somewhat similar source of agony — 

24. Finding that the person with whom you thus claim acquaintance 
has entirely forgotten you, though you perfectly remember him. 

Tes. Aye — as Persius says, 

" Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te — sciat alter."* 

25. On going in a coach to the depot, from which you are to set out on 
a long journey, being asked by the coachman three or four times more than 
his fare, which he knows you must pay, as you have not a moment's leisure 



* " To know thyself is nothing unless others know thee." 



TEE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE 47 

Flambeaux, i. e., fiery young gentlemen. 

to summon him at the time : while, on your return, it would be too late — 
in due consideration of all which, he further indulges himself in insolent 
language. 

26. As you walk the streets on the evening of the 4th of July, a 
cracker thrown into your pocket by some mischievous little rascal, who 
instantly runs away ; then, in your hasty attempt to snatch it out, feeling 
it burst in your hand, leaving your handkerchief in flames. 

Tes. Yes, and leaving you in the flames, too, at being dis- 
appointed of your vengeance against the young Villain : — 

" Ssevit atrox nee teli conspicit unquam 

Auctorem, nee quo se, ardens, immittere possit." — Virg. 

2*7. In taking out your money in an omnibus, dropping the greatest 
part of it (and all the gold) in the straw ; then, after grubbing and fum- 
bling after it for an hour, finding nothing but the gaping crevices through 
which it must have escaped. 

28. Treading in a beautrap* while in the act of gaily pausing to make 
a bow to some charming woman of your acquaintance, whom you suddenly 
meet, and to whom you liberally impart a share of the jet d'eau. 

29. As you walk forth, freshly and sprucely dressed, receiving in full, 
at a sharp turning, the filthy flu-tings of a wet broom. 

Tes. Ah ! the jade ! — Juvenal had never been submitted 
to this mode of irrigation, when he said 

"Nemo repente fit turpissimus." f 

30. A stripling at the next door learning to play upon the fife or fid- 
dle, and (besides other enormities in his practice) catching, as you play 
them, all your favorite airs, which he returns to you in every possible 
key and time, excepting the right, and not excepting the night. 



* A stone, dry on top, but insecurely poised in a puddle of wet 
•J- " No one becomes vile instantaneously." 



48 TILE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A new po (1) ker. A toss-up for choice of partners 

31. As you are quietly walking along in the Bowery, finding yourself 
suddenly obliged, though your dancing days have been long over, to lead 
outsides, cross over, foot it, and a variety of other steps and figures, with 
mad bulls for your partners, 

Ned Tes. The music being arranged for horns. 

32. Being accelerated in your walk by the lively application of a hand- 
cart a posteriori ; the "by your leave" not coming till after it is taken. 

33. Your hat, and part of your head, poked off from behind, without 
notice or apology, by a huge beam, or sign, or ladder, a quarter of a mile in 
length, as its bearers blindly blunder along with it. 




GOING THE ROUNDS. 



Sen. O, intolerable ! A Quaker at court is far better off; 
for, though his hat is lugged off by others unceremoniously 
enough, yet, I understand, they always make a point of leav- 
ing all the head behind. 

34. During the endless time that you are kept waiting at a door in a 
carriage, while the ladies are shopping, having your impatience soothed by 
the setting of a saw, close at your ear. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 49 

" Voices of the night." A feline misery, and a feelin' description of it. 

Ned Tes. 

" From the table of my memory 
I'll wipe away all saws." — Shak. 

Sen. I have listened to those horrible things sometimes, 
till it seemed as if my ear would drop off. 

Ned Tes. The saw-sir was set to catch your ear, in view 
of such a catastrophe, like the fish with his dish in the affect- 
ing history of the death of Cock Robin. 

Sen. Speaking of catastrophe, reminds me of another hear- 
ing misery not uncommon in New York. 

35. To be kept awake by a convivial party of cats making love on the 
house-tops, which they do in such a feline sort of way that it is difficult to 
distinguish it from making war. Then when you have borne it to the 
limit of mortal endurance, to get up and make a martyr of yourself , 
m the cold, throwing away all your old boots and a hair-brush out of the 
scuttle without any permanent or visible effect. 

Ned Tes. In such a case you would like to have had a 
cat as trophy to show for your exploit. 

Sen. Many and various are the assaults peaceable sleep is 
subject to in the city, i" never can get to sleep again after 
being once waked up. 

Ned Tes. Yours is not a piece-able sleep then. 

Sen. In view of that, no doubt, and to improve my habits 
of industry, fate has ordained that I should be roused at day- 
light every morning in the week except Sunday by the bell 
of a factory of some sort within two blocks of me. 

Ned Tes. You do not know what sort of a factory it be- 
longs to, except that it is not a sa^-factory bell, I suppose. 

Tes. Whenever there is an alarm of fire in our district, an 
infernal machine, manned, or rather boifd, by a parcel of evil 
spirits, comes thundering past my door. 

3 



50 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

When may a story be said to be "going the rounds" 1 

Ned Tes. The engine is boy'd by the spirits, and the 
spirits are buoyed by the noise. The fact is, they make a 
regular frolic of it; so you can say you are roused by the 
lark, which is rather poetical. 

Sen. I often think how natural it is that the owners of 
those voices should be firemen. It must excite tender remi- 
niscences of the home of their fathers, and give them a vivid 
and realizing sense of their birthright, heritage, and ultimate 
destination — -for they must be fiends incarnate. 

Tes. Here is a misery that is of continual application in 
New York, where, as a general rule, they always tear down 
a house as soon as the mortar is dry with which it was built. 
Ned" Tes. Unless it tumbles down in the mean time — to 
the great relief of the owners, and the great disgust of the 
people inside. 

36. Crouching and crawling through the scaffoldings, ladders, rubbish, 
flying smother, tumbling bricks, &c, of a house half pulled down — and all 
this without having made your will. 

Ned Tes. With a possibility of being laid as low by the 
descent of a brick on your hat, as if the said " brick" were 
inside thereof. 

Sen. And what a wretched spectacle a house in process 
of demolition is ! It is a misery in itself to look at one. 
After the front has departed, the floors and sides remaining 
look like a gigantic set of shelves ; and if it is a dwelling- 
house, it seems like witnessing a dissection, to see its pene- 
tralia uncovered and laid bare. Far up and conspicuous, all 
may gaze at the inside walls and paper-hanging, (hanging, in- 
deed, now,) that have looked down silently on so many scenes 
in the domestic history of its successive occupants, and even 
the very fireplaces, still black with the smoke of the fuel that 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 51 

"When the bricks it was built of are being brought down a ladder. 

warmed the inmates when the. room had four sides and nobody 
could see into it ! 

Tes, That may all be very fine, but it is of more conse- 
quence to me that the lazy Irishmen, to save themselves a 
little trouble, have extended a pathway from the parlor 
windows to the top of their brick pile in the street, so that all 
persons must either dive under, like fish, or fly over, like 
birds, or walk round the brick pile in the mud like fools — 
though no one is enough interested to swear a complaint 
against them as a nuisance. 

Ned Tes. Unless swearing profane oaths would answer. 

Tes. And so here, I perceive, we are both shutting up our 
black books. 

Sen. Yes. Well, then, Mr. Testy, are any of these ad- 
ventures, think you, likely to remove the impressions under 
which we came together 1 

Tes. Remove them ! I will soon show you my opinion 
on that point, by hurrying out of town to-morrow morning ; 
for vile as the country is in most respects, yet, to give it its 
due, you can generally breathe the air — you can hear your- 
self speak, though there is nobody to speak to — there is no 
bad smell in some of the flowers — you can see an inch before 
your nose — and you can bear to look at your hands for at 
least half an hour after you have washed them. How hos- 
pitably the five senses are entertained in the city, we have 
pretty well seen. 

Sen. But you know, Testy, we ought to look into the 
city's entertainments on the same principle that we used up 
the games, sports, and amusements out of town. Let us go 
and hunt them all up, and make a chapter of them. 

Tes. Not I. I'm not going to make a martyr of myself 
to the cause. There are plenty of victims to the miseries of 



52 TEE MISERIES OF EITMAN LIFE. 

The folly of using an income for amusing a nincom. 

human life — involuntary ones. . (Aside, with a jerk over his 
shoulder meant to designate Mrs. T. and the nursery. You 
know my outlays in that line must be multiplied by three or 
four.) No, no, Sensitive! I am not going to pay down one- 
half of my income to be able to say, from personal expe- 
rience, that the pleasantest moment to be found in the 
pleasantest place of amusement, is that in which you emerge 
from the door — crowded, jammed, stunned, and painful though 
it be. 

Ned Tes. With wrings on your fingers (and every where 
else) and belles on your toes, no doubt. 

Sen. Well, I'll " sacrifice my private interest to the public 
good," as a desperate office-seeker always says on receiving 
a nomination he has tried for tremendously; Til bell the 
cat; Til make a crusader of myself — address myself to the 
task as heartily as may be — and throw myself into every 
breach. 

Ned Tes. (aside.) A new style of dressing — throwing one's 
self into the breeches. 

Tes. No, no ! I have no idea of letting you perish un- 
timely in that style, especially with our work only half done 
by being well begun. For such would be the effect of such 
a course of treatment. 

Ned Tes. I wish some of my enemies would take a 
fancy to make a martyr of me that same way. I'd be re- 
signed to visit all the public amusements in succession, if 
necessary. 

Sen. O, don't be so much concerned about me. To be 
sure, I should be very miserable ; but then, you know, if it 
was a duty — pious fortitude, &c. 

Tes. Do not say any more about it, Sensitive, or I shall 
think the cause is in more danger of losing you in another 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 53 

Theatres, &c. Places of public abusement. 

way. Let us set down what few miseries occur to us in that 
line, and let the rest go. 

Ned Tes. If there was to be a chapter, I'd be the chap to 
do it, and suffer it. 

37. After tremendous efforts to get up a party for the theatre, where 
there is a play only every other night, to find that you had made a mis- 
take of one day in your calculations. 

Ned Tes. " All work and no play " with a vengeance. 

38. The first time of hearing an opera by a non-musical ear, when it is 
" all sound and fury, signifying nothing" — except an air or two you have 
heard before. 

Ned Tes. There are some operas a little misnamed. For 
opera, read uproar. 

39. On going to the play to see a favorite performer, to be told, at 
the drawing up of the curtain — as you had augured from the rueful bow 
of the speaker — that he, or she, is suddenly taken ill, or dead, and that 

Mi\ , or Miss , the hacks of the house, has kindly undertaken 

to try to read the part at five minutes' notice. 

40. In the pit, at the opera, a broad-shouldered fellow, seven feet high, 
seated immediately before you during the whole of the ballet. 

41. While sitting in a front row of the front boxes, during the deepest 
part of the tragedy, yourself and friends suddenly required to stand up 
and crowd back upon each other, while you hold up the seat for a large 
party in procession, who take up twenty minutes in getting down to their 
places, in one of which you had seated yourself by mistake, and conse- 
quently are now turned out, and have to tread back your way into the 
lobby, over the laps of ladies, without a chance for another seat. 

42. At a concert, as you are preparing to listen to one of the Nightin- 
gale's best songs, being suddenly environed by a crew of savages, whose 
laughter and gabble are all that you are allowed to hear. ' 

43. After the ballet, on a raw, wet night, with a party of ladies — 



54 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

" Going to ballet-hack" not so easy for a common man as for a fool. 

fretting and freezing in the outer lobbies and at the street-doors of the 
theatre, among cabmen and other human refuse, in endless attempts to 
find out your carriage, which, when found at last, cannot be drawn up 
nearer than a furlong from the door. 

44. Pushing in with an immense crowd at a narrow door, through 
which such another crowd is pushing out : — thermometer at 95 or '6. 

45. After the play, to be detained with your party in the house, on a 
frosty night, till the last of the company, as well as of the lights, are 
gone out. 

46. Your feelings put to the rack throughout the most moving scenes 
of a deep tragedy by a riotous rascal in the upper gallery, who will not, 
for a moment, suffer his neighbors to cry in peace ; while you are per- 
petually tantalized with neglected proposals from the tender-hearted part 
of the audience to " throw him over !" 

4*7. Your opera-glass — which had been perfectly clear while there 
was nothing in the house worth spying at — becoming obstinately dim at 
the moment when you have pointed it towards an enchanting creature 
who has just entered. 

48. Sitting on the last row and close to the partition of an upper box 
at a pantomime, and hearing all the house laughing around you, while you 
strain your wrists, neck, and back with stretching forward — in vain. 

49. In the pit, at the opera, turning briskly round, on hearing a box- 
door open close by you, in hopes of feasting your eyes on some young 
angel whom you expect to appear, and beholding, instead of her, that sort 
of hideous, old, crabbed-looking crone of fashion, whose face is as full of 
wrinkles as her head is of diamonds. 

Ned Tes. 

" Who, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
"Wears yet a precious jewel in her head." — Shak. 

50. Those parts of the entertainment at the circus which do not con- 
sist of pranks or horsemanship. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 55 

The misery of condolence. 

51. Sitting with an excruciating headache to see a vile play acted by 
viler performers, for the eighth or tenth time, in a crowded back row, with 
a dull party, in August. 

Sen. To be one of a frightfully small number gathered to 
witness any exhibition, is worse than almost any crowd. In 
fact, to be present at any conspicuously unsuccessful public 
effort is one of my most uncomfortable experiences. The 
fates seem not to be satisfied with making man uncomfort- 
able on his own account, but he must be uncomfortable for 
all the world, and without doing all the world any good 
thereby ! 

Tes. Sympathy in cases of mortification is a great blunder, 
but not a very common one. 

Sen. No mistake could be greater than to suppose that 
condolence is any alleviation of that sort of unhappiness. For 
if you analyze matters closely, you will find that the fear of 
having excited that sentiment is the very thing that distresses. 
Any one can stand brutal, open-mouthed ridicule, but the sus- 
picion of an effort at considerate self-restraint in others (no 
matter how successful) is torture to the person out of regard 
for whom it is exercised. 

52. The endless interval which sometimes passes between the play 
and farce, and this while you are sitting by a lady whom you consider it 
as your duty to entertain, but who does not consider it as her duty to be 
entertained, and still less, to requite your attempts in kind. 

53. Wading through those gossiping scenes of a play in which the 
lackeys and waiting-maids lay their heads together about the plans and 
characters of their masters and mistresses; or that part of the opera in 

which Signor and Signora (we all know who) fill up the 

void, while the stars are refreshing themselves behind the scenes. 

54. After having paid a high premium for a place in some concert 



56 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Is it a bad box to have no box at all ? 

where seats are in great request, to find that it has been disposed of, by 

mistake, to the Hon. Mi*. , or General somebody. Then, to be 

offered, on application to the managers, the money they received for the 
place — not by any means the money you paid to the speculator you bought 
your ticket of. 

Ned Tes. Your title (to the place) was good ; "but the Gen- 
eral's (to his name) was more potent. 

Tes. I can't think you have chosen your happiest misery 
for the last, or, rather, I won't allow it to be any misery at 
all ; for as your pleasure must have lain in getting out of 
these enchanting places as fast as possible, (though for a par- 
ticular purpose you had bound yourself to go into them,) you 
ought, I think, to have considered it as a high stroke of good 
luck to have thus reconciled the satisfaction of having at- 
tempted to do your duty, with the still higher satisfaction of 
leaving it undone. For — to fetch a parallel case out of the 
Roman history — if old Regulus's opinion could be taken upon 
his own affair, I fancy he would tell us that, though he thought 
it became him to keep his word by returning to Carthage, for 
the purpose of occupying that teizing tub which the carpenter 
had fitted up for his reception, he would have been quite as 
well pleased if he had found, on his arrival, that it had just 
been let out, "by mistake," to another gentleman ! 

Sen. Capital ! But you've not heard my last yet. 

55. To finish off an evening spent in delights of this sort by coming 
home to a house closed to any appeal you can make. 

Ned Tes. A peal or a score of peals, on bell and knocker 
included. 

56. Windows fly up, and alarmed faces in hideous nightcaps crop out 
on all sides. Every body seems to be awake except the servant who sat 
up by the kitchen fire to admit you. He, in the mean time, is just dream- 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



57 



The close of the drama. 



ing that he has been to the theatre, and is frying to knock up the house to 
let Mm in. This goes on of course indefinitely. The time seems inter- 
minable. Your patience is exhausted, and your demonstrations become 
more and more forcible ; but the resounding blows only enter into then* 
appropriate niches in the sleeper's dream ; and he has the impudence to 
get quite angry in it, that nobody pays any attention to him ! 

Ned Tes. I should be tempted to put an end to my suffer- 
ings by an appeal to 




THE STATUTE OF LIMB-HIT-ATIONS.' 



3* 



58 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Miseries of travelling. " Voyager c'est vivre." 



CHAPTER IV. 

Miseries of travelling. " Voyager c'est vivre." — Literal people a pest. A dig at the 
dignitaries. — Travelling preliminaries. Pick up and pack up. — Pilgrim's Progress. 
Boxing the clothes and closing the box.— Obliging friends, i. e., friends who oblige 
you to accommodate them. — A memorandum-book, — " Though lost to sight, to 
memory dear." — The poetical "bark," like Peruvian bark, nauseous enough in 
reality. — A post mortem examination connected with the dead letter office.— 
Kailroads, beginning with a depot-sition on the nuisance of starting. — The whistle 
— a car-tune preliminary to a picture of despair. — Inn for it, with a vengeance. — 
A stir-up to the placidity of your temper, already saddley tried. — Drivers. The 
only stage-managers who don't get disgusted with the dram(a). — The pest — the 
dam-pest of damp sheets. — " I love a softer climb" than the upper berth, " Gents' 
Cabin." — Transpositions, a new epidemic. Inoculation for the reader. — Mean im- 
position — not in position to be resented. — Light is the smoker's care if he only has 
a cigar ! — A feet-id odor. What boots it to complain ? — " Pleasure rowed a fairy -boat." 
"What rode a ferry-boat ? — Cattle damages. The joint-stock having to pay for the dis- 
jointed. — Official appointments. Miserable sticks elevated to responsible posts. 

Sen. It is an uncommonly" pleasant thing to dream of 
travelling. To lie down after dinner and read yourself to 
sleep, and dream of going over the prairies to the Rocky 
Mountains, if the book is Irving's Astoria ; of exploring the 
Holy Land, if it is Stephens's ; or of going to England, if you 
are reading, or ever have read any thing. To dream of all 
this, I say, has as little of misery in it, and therefore would 
seem about as barren ground for the research particularly 
allotted to us, as any state of existence in the whole unhappy 
round of human experience. But 

" Das ungluck schreitet schnell," 

Misfortune courses fast. It seems like tempting Providence 
— like making a jest of misfortune — this journeying mentally 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 59 

Literal people a pest. A dig at the dignitaries. 

and self-indulging corporeally, for we do not know how soon 
we may be on a real journey ! 

Tes. Yes ; it is like playing with edge tools, (which an old 
adage warns nearly all humanity against,) to allow such 
thoughts to come into your head. You may unguardedly 
think aloud. 

Ned Tes. Which is not allowed in good society. 

Tes. Suppose you say, " I'll go to Oregon — to Petra — to 
Oxford," and are overheard by one of those pests of society, 
literal people, you may set it down as a fixed fact, that you 
are going, and that the sooner it is, the sooner he will stop 
asking you when it is to be. 

Sen. Do you know, Testy, I had fixed on that very 
species of the genus bore for a " misery V A jackass, who 
can allow no figure of speech which cannot be mathematically 
demonstrated by figures of arithmetic — who is always ready 
to spoil a good after-dinner story, no matter of how little 
consequence to the company is its correctness, or even 
veracity — 

Ned Tes. "Scourge of the dessert" such a man might be 
called, in Arabian metaphor. 

Sen. Ready and willing to restrain the laugh, while he 
asks an explanation of some inconsistency the relator is per- 
fectly willing the hearer should arrange to suit himself. 

Tes. And a laugh laid on the table in that way is as 
effectually spoiled, lost, annihilated, dead and buried and for- 
gotten, as a resolution of inquiry into some abuse laid on the 
table of the Board of Aldermen. 

Sen. " Good friend, for mercy's sake forbear !" Let us allot, 
in some proper place, ten chapters to an epitome of the subjects 
of complaint connected with the misgovernment of the city 
of New York. When you get on that board, we are afloat— 



60 TEE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Travelling preliminaries. Pick up and pack up. 

Ned Tes. The board of Alder-men ought to contain the 
pith of the city. * 

Sen. And when we board the common council, our chapter 
of travelling miseries is " lodged and done for" indefinitely. 
Shun the flattering contest ; strive against the temptation as 
you would against a pestilence, or, rather, as they would — 
i. e., by running resolutely away. Let us plunge in medias 
res of the subject in hand, which is certainly a rich enough 
"gulch." Pack up! There's a mine of discomfort in the 
very sound. All those little nothings that make up the life of 
the sedentary — that are good enough for the habit-life — the 
anxious glance of the prospective traveller sees grow three 
years older in a single morning ; and this metamorphosis is 
the first phenomenon you perceive by the " extended views" 
you set out to acquire. 

Tes. I find, and I suppose every one finds, on getting 
ready for a journey, that there is scarcely an article of per- 
sonal property that would not be indispensable in some 
juncture which his imagination conjures up. 

Sen. Certainly. But at the same time he ivonH have 
much baggage — that every man determines just as regularly 
as he resolves he won't be sea-sick, and is just as regularly 
made to eat his words. 

Ned Tes. An uncommonly nauseous diet they make — • 
especially in the case of sea-sickness. 

Sen. The progress of your ideas in regard to incum- 
brances is reluctantly onward. Even after having built chi- 
merical hopes on drawers your state-room will put at your dis- 

* We must respectfully suggest to Mr. T. that pith is contained in the 
Elder-tree, and not in the Alder or Birch — though the Birch is often capable 
of pithy application to any particular subject in hand, as Ned had, no 
doubt, learned in the school of experience — or the experience of school. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Gl 



Pilgrim's Progress. Boxing the clothes and closing the box. 

posal, the list of indispensables is scarcely diminished. You 
finish by classing the major part of your effects in an enormous 
box — if you are so unfortunate as to have one. If you have 
none, you leave half your trash behind, and are as much bet- 
ter off, as " Christian" is, when he starts to go up the " Hill 
Difficulty," when Bunyan makes his bundle drop off. 

Ned Tes. A modern pedestrian would rather keep the 
bundle and make the bunnions drop off. 

Sen. When, by the help of " the cook and all hands" and 
knees, you shut the blessed chest, you have still a sinister 




^N\>«&VLSv-W^. 



THE CLOSING SCENE. 



62 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Obliging friends, i. e., friends who oblige you to accommodate them. 

after-thought left by your victory. How would you have 
done in a continental inn, left to your own resources? 

Tes. Now, let me suggest. Suppose a friend comes in, to 
your confusion, and inquires if it would be too much to 
ask you to take charge of a parcel for him — very light. 
You see no parcel, and therefore conclude it is in his pocket, 
and hold out your hand for it, with every protestation of 
pleasure. " Very light," he adds, " but a little voluminous." 
But since you are so very kind, he calls in his man with an 
enormous bandbox large enough for three hats and feathers ! 
" It's only some Paris fashions that my wife does not like, and 
would be extremely obliged if you would carry back to Rue 
Quelquechose, and get 157 francs. She is sure you will have 
but little trouble, as the people were very polite, and, at any 
rate, they distinctly promised to take them back." There is 
a pleasant vista opening before you ! A fine opening for a 
rising young man to make himself generally useful, and no 
salary given ! A wild-goose chase — ■ 

Ned Tes. For a goose with ostrich feathers she does not 
like. A chase where you make game of yourself for the sport 
of the spectators. 

Sen. There is nothing to do in such cases but " grin and 
bear it," as I know by the sad experience of a bachelor — the 
public servant, "because he's got no family to take care of." 

Tes. You literally grin and bear it — turn to your mem- 
orandum-book, commonplace-book, or what not — feigning a 
polite contentment — 

Ned Tes. Feigning outwardly, but profaning inwardly — 
putting on a grin to conceal chagrin. 

Tes. You turn to your book to take down his directions, 
or rather, turn to — look for it. It is lost, as a matter of course. 
When, at last, your assistant begins to have a dim idea that 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN- LIFE. 63 

A memorandum-book — " Though lost to sight, to memory dear." 

you are looking for the little green book with the string 
round it, " O, it's safe," he says, " in the big chest, at the 
very bottom !" 

Sen. Ha, ha, ha ! 

Tes. Your little book — your only hope and dependence ! 
With " mems" to be used before you set out, and every day 
from that till the one you get home again ! 

There is a certain bland and placid expression that 
despair can give as well as content, and that is the look you 
give the big chest to be opened and unpacked again ! 

Sen. Now suppose that, after taking out every article 
without producing the book, you spy it behind the trunk, 
where it has lain all the time : how infinitely it adds to your 
rage to find that your pains have been bootless ! 

Ned Tes. 1 should be tempted to try whether my boots 
would be painless, applied to the carcass of the fellow that 
made me the trouble — and the assistant to boot. 

Sen. The only redeeming feature about these preliminary 
annoyances is, that if they accomplish the end you fear, they 
do you a positive benefit. When you drive tearing down to 
the dock, and see the steamer gliding complacently down the 
stream, out of your reach, you are positively better off than 
if you had got off, by double the amount of the passage- 
money you have paid and forfeited. Your disappointed, 
balked feeling will not let you think so ; but we'll prove it, 
unavoidably and incontestably prove it, before we mark off 
half the catalogue of the "Miseries of Travelling." 

Ned Tes. Still, it is not pleasant, when you wish to be 
right, ahead, to be left, behind. It's the contrary. 

Sen. Being left behind before you set out, saved you from 
a dozen or so of similar experiences before you would have 
sot back. 



64 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The poetical " bark," like Peruvian bark, nauseous enough in reality. 

Tes. How sea-sick to-day is the man who sailed yesterday ! 

Ned Tes. " His bark is on the sea." And he is " sick as 
a dog," of course. Hydrophobia, too, or madness of water 
— disgust at water and every thing connected therewith. 

Sen. " Mens insana in corpore insane*." 

Ned Tes. Construe that, " wretched souls in retching 
bodies," and you furnish the faculty with very fair Latin for 
sea-sickness. 

Tes. But suppose we stop the mortar and start the bricks. 

1. To enter a continental cathedral with the sole object of hearing the 
music, and then to find that the price you have to pay is, attendance on a 
mass of mummery from which you have no escape and which seems to 
have no end. 

Ned Tes. The Te Deum of the choir not sufficing to relieve 
the tedium of the other exercises. 

2. In London — noticing a slight surprise or disposition to laugh, in the 
company where you deliver your first letter of introduction, on casually 
mentioning the locality you must seek to deliver your second. 

3. To hear the H d quoted as authority, and then to hear your 

indignant disclaimer civilly attributed to party hatred, "which runa so 
high in America." 

4. To be pestered with meeting, time after time, as you go through 
England, a low-bred, drawling, spitting countryman and ship companion 
of your own, who started at the same time, and to see about the same 
things, and who, therefore, seems to be your fate. Wherever you go — to 
the top of St. Paul's, he is there ; to the bottom of the lowest mine in 
Wales, there he is, that indefatigable man ; until you ask him, in despera- 
tion, all the places he is going to, in order that you may stay away. 

Tes. Then, suppose he mistakes your question for a wish 
for his company, and answers that he'll go whichever way 
you want. Not petikler. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 65 

A post mortem examination connected with the dead letter office. 

5. To have your inadvertent use of "right away" for "directly" 
noticed by an ignorant Cockney, who says, " We never do those kind of 
thing in Hingland, you know," and who would not hesitate to ask you to 
" ang up your at on an ook in the all." 

6. Entering France with the idea that you have a fair practical knowl- 
edge of French, and then finding your only difficulties to be, that you can- 
not understand what anybody says, and that nobody can understand what 
you say. 

1. Finding that you had been addressing a charming Frenchwoman all 
the evening by a word which had an absurd meaning in her language, but 
which you mistook for her name. 

8. To be eternally disappointed in receiving letters. 
Sen. I can give you an aggravation of that. 

9. After having, with all possible care, sent a letter on shore by the 
pilot, giving full directions, as you had agreed with your friends, where to 
address, (fee, to wait week after week without a line, and then, when you do 
seize the welcome envelope and tear it open, to find it a notice from the 
postmaster, that if you will send eightpence to prepay the letter signed 
by your name, it shall be forwarded to its destination ! 

Sen. That bloody pirate — pilot I mean — had kept the 
whole halfcrown, instead of prepaying, as he promised ! * 

Ned Tes. I should say that that pilot was a lineal descend- 
ant from Pontius ! 

Sen. Possibly. But if Pontius Pilate washed his hands, 
the habit certainly did not run in the family, according to 
my observation. 

Tes. As for railroads, they deserve an encyclopedia of 
miseries for themselves. 



* A personal reminiscence of the Am. Ed. 



66 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Eailroads, beginning with a depot-sition on the nuisance of starting. 

Sen. So they do. The Anti-renters very properly con- 
sider riding on a rail the proper accompaniment of tarring 
and feathering; and I shrewdly suspect the analogy holds 
good — that riding on two rails is just twice as uncomfortable. 

Tes. I'll start, if you like. But don't suppose that I'm 
going abroad for railway miseries. We may as well begin 
with the R. R. For starting, that offers unparal- 
leled attractions. After you get fairly on the rails, it is 
only inevitably uncomfortable, but the outset is unneces- 
sarily so. 

Ned Tes. The corporations probably, (as an exception to 
the general rule,) have a soul, and their sole object is to save 
any one from unnecessary rail-ing. 

10. On getting out of your carnage in a pouring rain — 

Ned Tes. (Poor plan to set out when the rains set in.) 

— there being no shelter to drive under to contest the hackman's charge, you 
are cheated as a matter of course. 

To find, on rushing at the little, unprotected door, through a melee of 
express wagons, orange-women, tall hotel stages, &c, that two solid feet, 
human, occupy every superficial foot of floor in the little, whitewashed, 
tobacco-smeared sentry-box that serves for ticket-office, baggage-room 
and passenger-room ; leaving you the alternative of standing on the toes 
of one of the said feet (human) or on your dignity outside in the rain, 
while you watch quitting the other shore the boat supposed, by courtesy, 
to be on hand to meet you. And this road averages thirty-six trains a 
day over part of its rails ! * 

11. On the R. R. On arriving at the one hundred and 

third stopping-place, with one house in it and one road leading to it, and 
one passenger and one bundle of onions waiting on the platform : to ask 

* A new depot is since built. 



THE MISERIES OF HITMAN LIFE. 67 

The whistle — a car-tune preliminary to a picture of despair. 

the conductor, confidentially, how many more there are of the same soil, 
before you will reach your destination — and to be told, confidentially, that 
he does not know. 

12. To get on an overloaded train, and see envyingly various 

pedestrians walking by you on the other track, remarking with a bland 
smile, that they would stop and join you but that they are in a great 
huny. 

1 3. On the R. R. Before setting out, to have your friends, with 

meaning looks, take an affectionate farewell of you, and then to sit by a 
man who details to you the particulars of all the accidents as you pass the 
scene of each. 

14. A car window that will not be put up when it is down, nor down 
when it is up. 

15. Attempting to pencil memoranda at high speed, with a single 
piece of paper placed in the palm of your left hand. 

16. Riding in a close car, to raise incautiously the streaming window, 
and feel a great cinder dash into your eye — (subito oculis objicitur mon- 
strum) — then, after carrying it home in an agony and sitting for an hour 
while the socket is rummaged with the corner of a handkerchief — your eye 
left sorer than ever ; the metal appealing to have grown into a mine since 
it first dug its pit there. 

17. While standing on a platform, to be startled by a proposal of the 
conductor to " put you out," and to find that he only meant, jocosely, to 
put out a cinder which had burnt a hole in your great-coat, about as large 
as a dollar — bill. 

18. Standing up at a " R. R. Restaurant" to get a dinner (!) and as 
soon as you have got something better than you expected, and paid for it, 
to be called away by the accursed " hoot ! hoot !" of the locomotive, and 
" all aboard" from the conductor. It is a slight enhancement to find, when 
you have got into your seat, that it was the signal of a train going the 
other way, and that you would have had plenty of time — a decided 
enhancement to find, when you had supposed it was the other train", that 
it was yours, now fast quickening its pants in the distance. 



68 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Inn for it with a vengeance. 

Ned Tes. I think I should quicken my pants, and trot 
after it. 

19. To be made the victim of one of those new and splendid combi- 
nations by which they give you a check to the end of your journey, and 
take charge of your baggage, and you don't see it again till you arrive at 
your destination — if then. 

Ned Tes. In other words, they check your trunks to the 
end of the route, but do not check them when they get there, 
so they go on indefinitely. 

20. To spend your time and money to get back your wardrobe 

Ned Tes. Instituting one suit for the recovery of many — 

To recover damages and buy a new outfit ; and then to have the 

company find your trunk, and take back their money. 

21. To Lave your friends, instead of condoling with you on this loss, 
or any other, all ask with one voice, why you didn't do this and why you 
didn't do that, and why you didn't do the other ! 

22. In the room of a country tavern, to which you are condemned by 
floods, or indisposition, or something inevitable, to find yourself reduced 
to the following delassemens de coeur. First, for the morning : lying on 
the old rectangular horse-hair sofa, without cushions, and with every place 
where a head could possibly be laid, worn ragged, and frayed out, so that 
each particular horse-hair appears emulous of adding to your scanty locks 
by firmly implanting itself in your baldest and tenderest spot. Trying, in 
this agreeable situation, to squeeze out something more from the only 
paper you could get, to while away a ten hours' car-ride the day before. 
Then turning to your surroundings for consolation — the whitewash peeling 
off the ceiling (hang the rhymes), and the blue and yellow paper fly-trap 
hung in the middle, which appears to have done its duty most punctil- 
iously by the innumerable points and exclamation marks on it. Then for 
the twentieth time you look at the wretched prints and ornaments hung 
round the room — female personifications of the four seasons, or " Maria," 



THE MISERIES OF HITMAN LIFE. 69 

A stir-up to the placidity of your temper, already saddley tried. 

" Jane," or " Ellen," <fec, daubed over any how with red, purple, or rasp- 
berry cream colors: or " The Lovers' Parting," and " The Lover's Return," — 
in each of which a sailor, "with head and pantaloon legs of the largest size, 
(the latter an immense distance apart,) is seen within four steps of his 
boat's crew, unceremoniously embracing a young lady, whose dress 
matches so exactly with his hat as to appear to be off the same piece : and 
a copy of the Declaration of Independence, with portraits of the Presidents 
down to the last but four. After getting all this by heart, you ask, in 
desperation, for some books, which, when brought, turn out to be " Village 
Hymns ;" three or four wrecks of different spelling-books ; half a magazine 
in which every piece is " to be continued ;" an abridged abridgment of the 
History of the United States in questions and answers, with half the 
leaves torn out, and the other half illegible from thumbing ; an old edition 
of American Railway Statistics ; &c, &c. ; in each of which you try a few 
pages, nod over them till nine o'clock at night, and then retire to bed 
in a blue cloud of disgust, to hear the rain beat on the shingles till near 
twelve, before sleep blesses your weary mind and nervous and unweary 
body. 

Tes. " O horror, horror, horror, horror, horror !" I can 
never hope to go beyond this ; and yet the following would 
have made no bad figure, had it stood by itself: 

23. In a summer excursion with a delightful party, having one " black 
sheep" in your flock, who, though he obtruded himself on the company, 
neither enjoys fine sceneiy, joins in your gayety, can put up with incon- 
veniences on the road, nor will take himself off. 

24. The flap of a limber saddle rolling up, and galling and pinching 
your calf just above the boot, during a long day's ride over Michigan 
roads. 

25. A very high, hard trotting horse, who sets off before you have 
discovered that the stirrups are too long to assist you in humoring his 
gait : — then trying in vain to stop him. 

26. At the moment when your horse is beginning to run away with 
you ; losing your stirrup, which bangs your instep raw as often as you 
attempt to catch it with your foot. 



70 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Drivers. The only stage-managers who don't get disgusted with the dram(a). 

27. Or ; being mounted on a beast who, as soon as you have watered 
him in the road, very coolly proceeds to repose himself in the pond 
without taking you at all into his counsel, or payiug the slightest attention 
to your vivid remonstrances on the subject ; and then, after he has taken 
his i oil, getting on the wet saddle in cold blood. A horse that balks 
when he is whipped. 

28. Or; riding out to dinner, many miles off, on a beast that will not 
quit his walk, while you know that nothing short of a gallop will save 
your time ; no spurs, and nothing in your hand but a weak stick, which 
you presently reduce to a flail, and this you are constrained to use more 
gently than ever, for fear of reducing it to a stump, though the animal 
would take more whipping than ever, if you had it to <rive. 

29. Starting for an open ride to an evening engagement, in a mist 
which successively becomes a mizzle, a drizzle, a shower, a rain, a torrent. 
On arriving at the house at last, you have to beg the favor of making 
yourself look like a full sack (or an empty one) by wearing your host's 
intractable clothes. 

30. On your return from an excursion to the lakes, &c, being asked 

by the first Mend you meet, how you were struck with , naming 

the most celebrated spot on the tour ; the one, however, which by some 
villainous mischance you did not see. 

31. On "Western roads again. The attempt you make to sleep in a 
stage wagon under the following lulling circumstances. — Resting your 
head, with a new hat on it, against a side-post, from which it is incessantly 
cuffed and bumped away by the jumps and jolts of the springless, shack- 
ling machine; your knees miserably cramped; your opposite neighbor 
continually bobbing forward in his sleep and in your stomach — being 
waked from any momentary doze by the rascally driver stopping at every 
tavern to make himself drunker and drunker : then just as you are at last 
sinking into something very like a nap, you are waked up by the day- 
break to find that you are just taking leave of a beautiful country, through 
which you have been stealing all night ; and entering on a dull, barren 
flat, which continues through the day, as it had done through the day 
before. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 71 

The pest— the dam-pest of damp sheets. 

Sen. Your far-west journey gives us a host of good old 
standard miseries that one might have travelled a lifetime on 
the new-fangled plans without ever dreaming of. 

Tes. Not because there is not as plentiful a supply now 
as ever, but because there are so many new ones, that no one 
head can contain them all in addition to the old. 

Sen. Steamboats are my particular and especial bane. 
Consequently it seems as if there never was any land between 
me and the place I want to go to. There is a large assort- 
ment of sore discomforts fresh and green ( gangrene) in my 
memory. For instance : 

32. Enjoying 

" A wet sheet" 
without any 

" flowing sea," 

or any thing else in the least romantic. Rheumatic is a better word for 
the feeling, as if, when you have laid yourself into your little fiat shelf, 
you had got between two newspapers fresh from the press, or were half 
trying the water cure, viz., taking the wet sheet without any blanket pack 
outside of it. 

33. After having been kept awake most of the trip by this and other 
discomforts, to be waked out of your only nap by the steward's bell and 
a raging headache, to hold a colloquy somewhat like the following with 
your conscience and sense of duty : 

" Mane, piger, stertis : — Surge ! inquit ; eja 
Surge ! — JSTegas. — Instat : surge ! Inquit : — non queo : 
surge !"* — Pers. 



* You, snoring, dream till noon : — " Up ! up !" he cries : 
No, no. — " Yes ! yes ! get up !" — -I can't.—" Rise ! rise !" 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



" I love a softer climb" than the upper berth, " Gents' Cabin." 

Tes. That's misery enough of itself, heaven knows ; but 
here is something in addition. 

34. After rushing ashore in a most uncomfortable hurry — cravat and 
coat over yom* arm, drawer-strings hanging out, and collar lost — to find, 
as the boat disappears, that you have stopped at the wrong place — that 
two landings farther on is where your friends are waiting for you. 

35. To climb into an upper berth during a long moonlight-night trip 
on the Hudson ; knowing that, sleepy as you are, you may look forward 
to listening to the boots of that crazy race who look at views, within an 
inch and three quarters of the end of your nose for the rest of the night 

Ned Tes. 

" He thought as he hollowed his narrow bed, 
And punched up his meagre pillow, 
How the foe and the stranger should tread o'er his head, 
As he sped on his way o'er the billow." — Wolfe (altered). 

36. To go to Albany by steamboat. Or rather, to start for Albany, 
which, heaven knows, is a very different thing in these days ; and it's all 
you can calculate on. 

37. To find that you have mistaken end for end of the diagram in 
selecting your berth, and instead of getting the hindmost, you have secured, 
with great pains, the state-room between the cylinders and the wheel. 
Your good-humor and self-gratulation are vastly enhanced if it happens to 
be an ice night — the first trip breaking up in the spring — during the 
whole of which, each particular float keeps up one uncompromising roar ! 

Tes. Mrs. T. and myself once occupied a room under 
some such circumstances, when a cake of ice came bodily 
through the thin partition, and rested against the lower berth ! 

Ned Tes. Then, no doubt, mother treated the passengers 
to an ice cream, (or an ice scream, or a nice scream.) 

Sen. I wish you could learn to confine your puns to the 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 73 

Transpositions, a new epidemic. Inoculation for the reader. 

dead languages, Ned. However, bad puns deserve a con- 
spicuous place among the miseries of life, so you are always 
adding to our common stock. 

Tes. Do you know, Sensitive, these wretched transposi- 
tions, that just now infest the land like the frogs in Egypt, 
threaten to become a permanent plague, compared to which 
puns were as Christmas presents for rarity and agreeableness. 
A rod (of correction) that will swallow up puns, as Aaron's 
rod swallowed the Sorcerers'. 

Ned Tes. "Which put him at least a rod ahead of his 
competitors. 

Sen. Think of a man blandly looking in your face, and 
asking you to vote the " Tig Whicket," or take " a scottle of 
Botch Ale !" 

Tes. Even my next-but-one-to-youngest has learned to say 
he's " feak and weeble," as an excuse for laziness when he 
wants me to carry him. 

Sen. Even that is not the worst of it. If people w T ant to 
make such besotted fools of themselves, why let them. But 
the plague is infectious. I caught myself making one as I 
polished my hat the other day preparatory to going out. 
Said I, "Why should every housekeeping outfit contain a 
hat-brush V Because, by merely turning it round, you can 
make a brat hush ! 

" Is it a dream ? or am I still a child ?" — 

a drivelling infant in arms — a babe at the breast ! 

Ned Tes. (aside.) Ha ha ha, ha ha ha ! ! 

Tes. (disdainfully.) It's base flattery to call such things 
childish ! 

Sen. Talking of children brings us back to the lesson for 
the day, travelling miseries ; through association with one of the 

4 



74 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN- LIFE. 

Mean imposition — not in position to be resented. 

numerous annoyances of omnibus riding — numerous in pro- 
portion to the number of their inevitable sufferers ; contrary 
to the invariable rule of the good things of this life, which are 
plentiful in inverse proportion to the number of their par- 
takers. 

38. Sitting in an omnibus next to a maudlin mother, with a sick, but 
not silent, infant — windows all as tight as wax for the poor child's sake ! 

Tes. " Quodcunque ostendis mihi sick (O that T could add 
incredulous I) odi."* 

39. To drop your gold dollar exactly in the middle of the charmed 
circle of straw that your vis-a-vis has been playing the American tune\ 
on to your great disgust during your ride. 

40. To see a lady enter the stage with two children, take seats near 
the door, and make no motion to vacate either of the three places while 
the stage fills up ; and then, near the end of the route, ask you to hand up 
sixpence to the driver, while she hastily gets out ! 

Tes. I assure you the most unmitigated mental misery in 
all my experience is the uncomfortable, effectless anger 
excited by witnessing little selfish impositions practiced on 
others, for which reason, if for no other, I have no right to 
interfere, and nothing to do but smother the spontaneous 
tendency to exclaim against them. 

Sen. For instance, to see, as we three did, the other even- 
ing, on arriving late at a party, two or three specimens of 
Young America, snickering, empty into their own pockets 



* " Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi." — Hor. 

That which you thus make known to me, disbelieving, I hate, 
•f A spit-toon. 



— 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 75 

Light is the smoker's care if he only has a cigar ! 

the cigar-case provided in the dressing-room for the departing 
guests ! 

Tes. That reminds me of a most enraging predicament to 
a smoker in the country, without a waking man, woman, or 
child, for miles around. 

41. Setting out for a long night walk, in which the prospect of two 
good cigars is the only friendly element, (the other elements having all 
conspired against you,) you find with pleasure one match left. After every 
precaution you scrape it. It does not take. You strike again, harder. It 
cracks down by the end. Once more you take hold of the very tip and 
scrape long and well. It lights, and you cautiously remove your fingers 
to the upper part, and the burning speck drops off in the wet grass, and 
looks up for a moment 

" Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue," 

and then you see nothing but the green spot gathered in your eyes by 
looking at it so intently ! 




a match for anything. (Anything for a match.) 



76 THE MISERIES Of HUMAN LIFE. 

A feet-id blast. What boots it to complain ? 

Sen. Hard enough. We find it difficult to stick to the 
road when there are so many gardens of passion-flowers on 
every side. Let us finish up our travelling miseries after this 
one w T hich belongs to the little selfishnesses we were speak- 
ing of. 

42. To have a lady, whose company you are in, complain to the shop- 
owner of a clerk in a case where he is right and she is wrong. 

Tes. A trying dilemma, certainly. Now for the omni- 
buses once more. They cannot be exhausted yet. 

43. To take the seat by an end window, and be regaled with a fresh 
breeze, tinctured with the boots of a stable friend of the driver's, seated on 
the top with his feet hanging over. 

44. After rushing forward,' on account of the great haste you are in, 
past one stage to catch the one ahead of it, to see the last become first and 
the first last ; the other omnibus passing you, while your rascally driver 
waits for a load, answering all your remonstrances with as many ruses, to 
make you think he is going on : pulling up suddenly, as if called by a pas- 
senger in the distance, and standing as long as he dares for fear of your 
finding out that his passenger is a myth — a creature of his imagination ; 
then, just as you are going to get out, he swings open the door to let the 
myth get in. Nobody comes, and he slowly pulls the strap and goes on, 
to show you how exceedingly slow an omnibus horse can trot. Soon, 
however, you hear indications that he is going to pull up again. 

Ned Tes. Which only bring new conviction to your ears 
that " Wo" is the lot of wayfarers in this world. 

45. This time, however, you think you know a trick worth two of 
that, and begin a storm by telling him so, among other tilings ; interrupted 
by the entrance of a real passenger, an elegant lady acquaintance, who 
must have heard the whole of your tirade. 

46. Calling loudly, " Your stage is full, driver !" with a dignified look 
at the intruder, and then finding that there are but five on your side. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 77 

" Pleasure rowed a fairy-boat." What rode a ferry-boat ? 

41. For a stranger in the city : to get carefully into the right line of 
stages, and not find out that it is one going the wrong way, till on reach- 
ing Forty-second street he asks innocently, " Is this the South Ferry ?" 

Sen. One more, and then " Omnibus finis venit."* 

48. A long ride on a hot day, when the only indication of a breeze is 
a little puff of dust in your face now and then. 

Ned Tes. Perhaps there is no wind : but " de gust-ibus non 
est disputandum." 

50. To be detained by the ferry-boat's running aground or getting into 
tribulation of some sort, within twenty feet of the dock, there to wait till 
the tide rises. 

Ned Tes. Tied up in one sense, waiting for tide up in an- 
other. 

51. While congratulating yourself on having caught the last boat going 
over, to fall asleep, and stay so till the boat has started to go back. 

Ned Tes. Unlike Charon's ferry-boat, which never by any 
mistake brings you back, and to whom Styx in the mud can 
be no impediment. 

Sen. That is a full-grown misery in itself; with the pros- 
pect before you of staying in the dark, dusty ferry-room all 
night, till the woman comes to clean it out in the morning ; 
or, at best, of going to a miserable wharf-hotel for a lodging : 
and the retrospect of such ineffable stupidity as the cause of 
your dilemma. Now, suppose that the boat is unfortunately 
just at that distance as to leave you in doubt as to whether 
it was a space for jumping, but no doubt as to whether there 
was space for deliberation. You jump IN, (water 31 de- 



* To all things comes an end. 



78 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Cattle damages. The joint-stock having to pay for the disjointed. 

grees, as near as may be,) and are fished out, half insensible, 
with a ruined watch and suit of clothes, and without a hat, 
ruined or otherwise. 

Tes. Well, I'm glad our business is only to give the pains 
of each description of travelling, and not to decide which may 
claim the most. 

Sen. I stick to the steamboat. 

Tes. As for me, I would go in for the regular, unpunotual, 
hot, cold, dusty, rainy, unromantic, unsafe Rail Road. 

Ned Tes. It's lucky the corporations can take a little 
railing without taking offence. 

Sen. If they would take a fence and keep the cattle off 
the track, it would save the companies some money, and the 
public some lives, and would be no more than right besides, 
on the beasts' account. It is bad enough to take away their 
occupation, without subjecting them to the disagreeable sur- 
prise of finding themselves cut in two, before they begin to 
suspect that any thing is the matter. 

Ned Tes. Out of one window of an express train, the head 
and forequarters of a cow may often be seen grazing ; while, 
from the opposite one, is visible the tail brushing the flies off 
the odd half ! However, we have always one motive for 
using the railway. 

Tes. What is that, my son 1 

Ned Tes. A locomotive. 

Tes. Pshaw ! {To Sensitive.) This has been rather a long 
and laborious trial, albeit we take evidence only for one side. 

Sen. Yes, and we have not come near the end of our tether 
yet. Not one word have we said about passports, nor cus- 
tom-houses, nor banks, money matters, &c. 

Tes. Well, let us dismiss them all with one general groan 
for the whole tribe of officials, and let them continue to prac- 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



79 



Official appointments. Miserable sticks elevated to responsible posts. 

tice their annoyances on other people, or, when all the world has 
become wise enough to stay at home, on each other, like vipers 
in a barrel, or the bores in Swedenborg's Retributory Paradise. 

Sen. Most men, when they get " an appointment," seem 
to forget that they are hired to do the work in their office, 
and to imagine that they have hired the rest of the world to 
do what little there is requiring attention outside of it ! 

Tes. There they sit and mend their pens, and chat with 
their friends and each other, while their employer, the public, 
twirls its thumbs and repeats the multiplication table, to 
pass away the time outside ! 

Ned Tes. Where do those men expect to die when they 
go to ? Their consciences will be oppressed with many 




A GREAT WAIT. 



80 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The trials of social men. So shall men always suffer. 



CHAPTER Y. 

The trials of social men. So shall men always suffer. — A fair exhibition of the neat 
cattle of society. A hard row to hoe. — Divisions made by raillery. Schisms, not 
witticisms. — Music racks are well named : likewise, the strains of which they 
are the instruments. — Xoisy pets, that might as well be trum-pets, or pet-ards, at 
once. — It's sometimes pleasant to be found " not at home" — never, to be found 
out. — The country tempts you away from home, and the contretemps that follow 
you. — It is hard to have to bring your guests sick smiles. — The pains of politeness. 
The u mould of form" that gathers on social intercourse. — An unlucky speech that 
doesn't admit of a-mealy-oration afterwards. — Superlative flatterers, positive flats. 
Som-nolence vs. bene-volence. — A soar throat is just what a singer should have to 
reach the high notes with. — Building-sites and other exciting sights not heretofore 
cited. — There's one pathy for all diseases, we all employ when we can get it. 
Sympathy. — A calf tied to a waggin' tongue, by a halt-er without a bitt of com- 
punction. — De vinculo matrimonii — A father, tend-er to his offspring. 

Tes. Robinson Crusoe, indeed! No, no — Timon or Dio- 
genes, if you will — these are the recluses for me — the privi- 
lege of storming and railing is all I have purchased by making 
my bow in drawing-rooms, and I won't part with it for a trifle. 
Sen. 

" The grief that does not speak, 

"Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break." 

Tes. Come, then, " give sorrow words." 

1. In attempting to take up the poker softly, (an invalid asleep in the 
room,) throwing it violently down, sociably accompanied by the tongs and 
shovel in its falL 

2. Briskly stooping to pick up a lady's fan at the same moment when 
two other gentlemen are doing the same, and so making a cannon with 
your head against both of theirs — and this without being the happy man, 
after all. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 81 

A fair exhibition of the neat cattle of society. A hard row to hoe. 

3. A perpetual blister — alias, a sociable next door neighbor, who has 
taken a violent affection for you, in return for your no less violent antipathy 
to him. 

Tes. To her, if you please — I am sure that odious Mrs. 
M'Call will fairly worry me out of my life, if she stays in 
our neighborhood three months longer. 

Ned Tes. 

" Vse miserae nimium vicina !" — Yirg. 

4. A fellow who, after having obliquely applied to you for instruction 
upon any subject, keeps showing a restless anxiety to seem already fully 
informed upon it ; perpetually interrupting your answer with " Yes, sir — 
yes, yes, I know ; true, I am perfectly aware of that — 0, of course !" <fec. 

5. Visiting a remarkably nice lady, who lets you discover, by the ill 
suppressed convulsion of her features and motions, that she considers your 
shoes as not sufficiently wiped, (in your passage over at least twenty 
mats,) that you stand too near to a darling jar, lean rather too emphatically 
against the back of your chair, (fee, <fec, till you begin to envy the situation 
of real prisoners. 

6. Tearing your throat to rags iu abortive efforts to call back a person 
who has just left you, and with whom you have forgotten to touch on one 
of the most important subjects which you met to discuss. 

7. After having been accidentally detained on a water excursion far 
beyond the time you have to spare, rowing homeward, against wind and 
tide, with an appointment of the utmost consequence before you, which, 
you know, will soon be — behind you. Then, in plucking out your watch 
to see how much too late you shall be, jerking it over the side of the boat, 
and seeing it founder in an instant. 

8. Suddenly thinking of your best argument in a debate at dinner, 
and, in your eagerness to state it, swallowing your wine the wrong way, 
and so squeaking and croaking more and more unintelligibly, with the 
tears running down your cheeks, till the conversation has been turned, or 
your antagonist has left the company : 

4* 



82 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Divisions made by raillery. Schisms, not witticisms. 



; in mediis conatibus, eegri 



Succidimus ; — non lingua valet, non corpore notse 
Sufficiunt vires — nee vox, nee verba sequuntur."* — Virg. 

9. After having left a company where you have been galled by the 
raillery of some wag by profession — some fellow of more bitterness than 
brains — 

Ned Tes. A ivag of many tales, with a sting to each — 

To think, at your leisure, of a repartee, which, if discharged at the 
proper moment, would have blown him to atoms. 

10. Losing your way in an argument, so as to be obliged suddenly to 
hold your tongue, though, an instant before, you had the whole series of 
your reasonings full in view, and, could you have brought them to bear 
upon your opponent at the proper moment, he must have been struck dead» 

11. Accompanying a fond father in his attendance at his daughters 
" dancing day," at a petty boarding-school. 

12. After relating an excellent story, or pointed witticism, to a strange 
company — the frosty silence, vacant stare, with which it is received by the 
different auditors, of whose stupidity you had not been aware. 

Tes. Yes, yes, I have been there too — you might as well 
crack jokes in a dormitory at the dead of night, as in certain 
parties — " Joco uti illo, quidem, licet — sed sicut in somno et 
quietibus ceeteris." 

Sen. By the way : praiseworthy children, in general, are a 
frightful bore. I boarded in a house once where there was a 
little girl, who was a marvel of perseverance. As to music, 



* We, 'midst our struggliugs, fainting powerless, 
Fail — not the tongue can do its wonted task, 
Nor in our frames the well-known functions serve, 
Nor voice, nor will articulation come. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



83 



Music racks are well named : likewise, the strains of which they are the instruments. 

she did not play — she worked. How she did strive and wres- 
tle with that piano ! It was a good deal the biggest, but it 
gave in, at last, and did not resist any more, but only com- 
plained. / gave in, too. I came pretty near going "right 
off the handle," to be numbered among the killed and 
wounded of the " Battle of Prague," (or its modern succes- 
sor ;) but I escaped — saved myself by running away at 




THE ELEVENTH HOUR. 

Tes. You do that girl injustice. Hers was the spirit 
would have made a hero succeed. 

Ned Tes. And a hearer succumb. 

Sen. That's very true, as far as the girl is concerned. — 
Poor little heavy-headed, light-bodied, bright-eyed, dark- 
cheeked thing ! She did not live long. Unnatural education 
made her what she ought not to have been, and killed her 
when she ought not to have died. If I had been coroner, I 
would have given a verdict — " Died of injudicious friends." 



84 TEE MISERIES OF ETIMAN LIFE. 

Noisy pets, that might as well he trum-pets, or pet-ards, at once. 

1 3. Coming in too late for a breakfast engagement, and being contem- 
plated in silence by the rest of the company, who have done, but who 
think it polite to remain seated round the table, while you hastily wash 
down your glazed toast and butter, with drawn, vapid, cold tea — which, 
bad as it is, you prefer to the operose process of a fresh preparation for you. 

Ned Tes. Call me what you please, but don't call me — 
late to meals. 



14. Invading an humble regular family, (while quietly assembled 
round the dinner-table,) upon the wrong day. On entering the room you 
catch the servant in the act of removing the cloth — now to be re-laid, and 
slowly spread with the lukewarm ruins of the late meal, tumultuously re- 
manded from the kitchen, half rescued as it is from the clutches of the 
powers below ; and alternately seasoned, as you proceed, with stigmas 
upon every fork-full you take up, and panegyrics upon the delightful party 
with whom you were anxiously expected to partake it on the day before. 

15. Balking a good gape, by forcing your lips close together, in order 
to keep it a secret from a bore, that you are yawning in your sleeve at his 
stupidity. Likewise : paying a long visit at the retired house of a well- 
meaning soul, whose only idea of entertaining you, is that of never leaving 
you a moment by yourself. 

16. Seeing a swaggering smatterer in knowledge encircled by his 
levee of listeners, who blindly recognize his claim to be considered as an 
oracle; — perpetually and bowingly consulting him, and then patiently 
swallowing the response, like a bolus, without venturing to analyze it. 

17. Being caught in the fact of ogling your charmer, by the person 
from whom you are most desirous of concealing your tender anguish. 

18. On making a morning call at the house of a retired old lady, all 
your conversation wholly giving way to that of the dumb creatures who 
compose her parlor menagerie — parrots, macaws, cats, puppies, squirrels, 
monkeys, <fec, &c. — which open upon you altogether at the moment of 
your entrance, and never cease till that of your departure : v 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 85 

It*s sometimes pleasant to be found " not at home" — never, to be found out. 

" At once, an universal hubbub wild 
Of stunning sounds, and voices all confus'd, 
With loudest vehemence assaults his ear — 
And tumult, and confusion, all embroil'd, 
And Discord, with a thousand various mouths P 

The good old Dowager seeming rather pleased with, so far from once 
attempting to silence, this horrible " strife of tongues." 

19. Finding that your sagacious servant has cautiously denied you to 
the only person whom you ordered him to admit, and who has gone away 
without leaving his address ; or, that he has as carefully produced you to 
the single person whom you had sworn him to exclude — or both ! 

20. Keeping an old engagement with foggy folks, when strongly 
solicited to join a party of bright ones. — Item, receiving an invitation of 
the latter kind on the day after the party has taken place. 

21. Immediately after expressing to a person your sorrow at having 
been from home when he lately called upon you — incautiously letting out 
some circumstance which completely disproves your alibi. 

Ned Tes. Too bad, indeed ! — a man is never at a worse 
non plus than when, like poor Darius, 

" exposed he lies." 

Sen. Yes, and you may proceed 

" without a friend to close his eyes P 

as he looks the man who has detected him, in the face. 

22. The hour before dinner, during which you sit in a solemn circle of 
strangers : 

" Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia torrent !"* — Vihg. 



* Horror, e'en silence' self appalls their souls ! 

\ 



8G THE MISERIES OF HITMAN LIFE. 

The country tempts you away from homeland the contretemps that follow you. 

Tes. Yes ; and this when 

23. During that hour, you are waiting for one who, on his entrance, 
shows you the face of another stranger, instead of that of your particular 
friend, who has been invited to meet you, but sends an excuse. 

24. Endeavoring in vain to hear a person's remark, or question, 
addressed to you ; and after repeatedly saying " I beg your pardon, sir," 
&c, and making him go over it again, still not hearing him — 

" Nequicquam ingeminans, iterumque vocavit."* 

and so being reduced either to look foolish, and remain quite silent, or, in 
your anxiety to seem to have heard him. answering altogether a tort et d 
travers. 

25. The miscarriage of a letter announcing the day and hour of your 
visit to a friend, so that, on your arrival on horseback, after a long journey, 
(and this, too, from accidents on the road, late at night,) you find the 
family all abed ; when, after an hour's bawling and knocking, you have 
succeeded in bringing a servant to the window, and with great difficulty 
convinced him that you are not a mad housebreaker, you are at length let 
in, and on exploring the deserted rooms, in search of warmth and refresh- 
ment, find no better entertainment than — fires raked out, empty larder, 
cellar locked up, no bed prepared, <fec, &c. ; and to conclude, no stabling 
for your horse, nor any public house in the place. 

26. In conversation — inadvertently touching the string which you 
know will call forth the longest story of the flattest proser that ever 
droned. 

27. After sincerely and heartily agreeing, with one whose kindness you 
much wish to conciliate, in some violent sentiment — finding, from his 
reply, that you have totally mistaken his meaning, and that he detests 
your opinion, and you his ; so that, after a feeble attempt to extricate 
yourself, you suddenly hold your tongue : 



• in vain repeating, 

Again, and yet again he spake — 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 87 

It is hard to have to bring your guests sick smiles. 

" Dixit — et extemplo, (neque enim responsa dabantur 
Fida satis,) sensit medios delapsus in hostes : 
Obstupuit — retroque pedem, cum voce repressit."* — Virg. 

28. Living with, or even visiting, one whose feelings widely differ from 
your own with regard to the admission of fresh air. 

Tes. Plain spoken enough, Sensitive : — you know pretty 
well that, upon this point, I am a mole, and you a chameleon ; 
but I understand the hint, and so, as we have an extraordinary 
call for breath just now, up goes the window. 

Sen. Thank you, though I am certainly innocent of the 
imputed insinuation. 

29. After having, with much contrivance, effected an introduction 
between two persons whom you considered as formed to take delight in 
each other, discovering, before the first interview is half over, that they 
are centrifugal with respect to each other. 

30. The abortive attempts which you occasionally make to seem in 
high spirits when you are sick, stupid and wretched ; so that your mirth, 
like Macbeth's Amen, " sticks in your throat ;" perceiving, moreover, that 
the imposture is detected. 

Or, what is almost as bad — 



31. In trying to laugh at the heavy joke of a good man, but a vile 
jester, (" hilaris cum pondere virtus,") producing only that sort of spurious 
chuckle, or laborious ha ! ha ! which you feel must betray you. even to the 
worthy wag himself, though not at all of a suspicious nature ; then, on 
being loudly asked by one of the company, " What is the joke ?" being 
driven to confess that " you do not know" — as, in truth, you do not ; 
having laughed gratuitously, (without hearing or taking what was said,) 



* He said — and straight, from the reply unsure, 
Felt him 'mid foes betray'd : amaz'd he stood, 
And check'd his tongue, recoiling. 



88 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The pains of politeness. The " mould of form" that gathers on social intercourse. 

merely to pleasure the old gentleman, whose smiling eye, thrown round 
the table at the conclusion of his speech, had levied a general tax upon 
the muscles of his friends. 

Sen. But there is another compliment of the countenance, 
which costs me more still. 

32. The necessity sometimes imposed on you of wringing your fea- 
tures into a smirk, in addressing a poltroon, who is a tiger at home, and a 
lamb abroad : or any other miscreant out of prison. 

33. Talking with a man of iron, who hears only himself; and who, 
after you have knocked all his arguments on the head, one after the other, 
proceeds to haunt you with their ghosts ; so that destroying the substance 
only brings upon you the additional trouble of laying the shadow. 

34. Sitting on with a sepulchral party after supper, two or three 
hours beyond the time at which you had ordered your carnage, but with 
which your druDken coachman is unable to come ; so that you, at last, 
walk home five or six miles in the rain. 

35. In a large formal company, the necessity of communicating some- 
thing which you are extremely desirous of keeping secret from the rest of 
the party, to a person so very deaf that nothing under a roar will find its 
way to him. Or, the dead silence which sometimes takes place in com- 
pany, while you are availing yourself of the general noise of voices, to 
enter uj^on confidential subjects with your next neighbor. 

Tes. I can beat both your instances. 

36. Being compelled by a deaf person in a large and silent company 
to repeat some very washy remark three or four times over, at the highest 
pitch of your voice. 

37. The sensation of disgust, accompanied by a peculiar giddy faint- 
ness, not to be described, and perhaps fully felt only by myself, which 
affects one at certain speeches, certain manners, certain modes of pronun- 
ciation, and certain samples of folly, in certain persons. 



i 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 89 

An unlucky speech that doesn't admit of a-mealy-oration afterwards. 

38. Grating the sensibility, the prepossessions, the self-love, the vanity, 
&c, of the person to whom you are speaking, by some unguarded words, 
which, as soon as you have uttered them, you would die to eat ; then, 
floundering and plunging deeper and deeper in your wild and confused 
attempts to recover yourself. 

39. Going from house to house, for the purpose of soliciting contribu- 
tions for a case of distress ; and, with all your oratory, extorting nothing 
more substantial than half-muttered good wishes for the success of your 
charitable endeavors, though the good folks are " sorry they make a rule 
never to give to any whom they do not know," &c. 

40. After dinner, when the charming women with whom you were 
sitting have withdrawn, being left exposed to a long tete-d-tete with a 
Torpedo — a fellow who will neither pump nor flow. 

41. Being applied to, time after time, by certain easy folks with short 
memories, for the loan of small sums, for the avowed purpose of making 
purchases which you painfully refuse to yourself, out of economy ; or for 
the still more provoking purpose of making presents to then* friends. 

Ned Tes. They want to be let a loan — and so do you. 

42. After having said what you conceive to be a good thing, but which 
you fear that none of the company heard, finding yourself reduced to the 
horrible alternative of losing the credit of your wit, or of repeating your 
bonmot, with the risk of its having been before heard, and disapproved ; 
and, in this case, with the certainty of being thought both a fool and a 
coxcomb. 

43. "When in a nervous and irritable mood — sitting with one who has 
an unceasing trick of swinging in his chair like a pendulum — working his 
foot up and down like a knife-grinder — beating with his nails or knuckles 
like a drummer, &c, &c, — you being not sufficiently intimate with your 
tormentor to break in upon his occupations. 

44. After loudly boasting of your superior skill in stirring the fire, 
and being requested by the lady of the house to undertake it — suddenly 



90 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Superlative flatterers, positive flats. Som-nolence vs. bene-volence. 

extinguishing every spark, in playing off what you had announced as a 
chef d'oeuvre of the poker. 

45. Making your best bow for a supposed high compliment to yourself, 
which, however, you are presently petrified by discovering was either not 
intended at all, or intended for another. 

46. Compelling yourself to take gulp after gulp of the ipecacuanha of 
flattery, (known to be purely self-interested,) out of regard to the feelings 
of some worthy Mend or relation of the parasite, and whose presence re- 
strains you from snubbing him. 

47. Being crowed over in an argument by one whom politeness pre- 
vents you from telling that you do not answer him, merely because, from 
the thickness of his utterance, as well as of his head, you do not know what 
he says or means. 

48. Being baited on all sides with entreaties to sing, when, either by 
nature or accident, you have no voice. 

Tes. To which pray add, 

49. Your feelings during and immediately after the performance of 
another, who eminently possesses every disqualification for a singer. 

50. After a long pause in conversation with a reserved person, to 
whom you are almost a stranger, re-addressing him at the same instant 
when he is re-addressing you — a polite and dead stop on both sides — then, 
after a reasonable time mutually given and taken for resuming the stifled 
speech, without effect, both chancing, at the same point of time, to ven- 
ture again, and both as suddenly again desisting ; till each is, at length, 
necessitated to take refuge in silent confusion. 

51. To be seized with morbid and irresistible sleepiness, while in con- 
versation with persons who have every title to your respect or veneration, 
and before whom 

Ne " fas est obrepere somnum."* — Hor. 



* " Sleep may" not " be allowed to steal upon you." 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 91 

A soar throat is just what a singer should have to reach the high notes with. 

52. Heaving bad grammar, bad emphasis, &c, from persons who ought 
to know much better, without the liberty of interfering. 

53. The comfort of being kept half an hour without your hat in a 
drizzling rain, while attending a button holder to your gate. 

Ned Tes. (aside to the reader.) What is the difference be- 
tween a bare head and a hair bed? A bare head flees for a 
shelter ; a hair bedh a shelter for fleas. 

54. On an afternoon visit in the country — receiving a summons to 
attend a few Cats, (who think themselves Kittens,) in their evening prom- 
enade ; while the enchanting girl who formed your sole attraction to the 
house is confined at home by a slight indisposition, which would have 
only rendered her additionally interesting. 

55. Being drawn into an inflammatory dispute while laboring under 
a no less inflammatory sore throat. 

56. Drawing twelfth cake with a party who have too little fancy even 
to attempt to support their characters ; or, if they do attempt it, to suc- 
ceed: but who bespeak these, and other Christmas frolics, just as they had 
bespoken the plumcake which attaches to them. 

Ned Tes. Where each man, instead, makes a cake of him- 
self to the best of his ability. 

57. Being destined to live with Automata — people who regulate all 
their thoughts, words, and actions, by the stop-watch — whom no entreaties 
can melt into a consent to rise before, or sit up after, a stated second — to 
bend to the most minute variation of the dinner hour — to light a fire 
before old Michaelmas day, or keep it in after Lady ditto — to read, or 
hear read, more, or less, than a measured number of pages at a sitting — to 
stay over the farce after a play, &c, &c. 

Tes. 

" Ilia manent immota locis, neque abordine cedunt."* — Virg. 

* Fix'd they remain, nor from their order part, 



92 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Building-sites and other exciting sights not heretofore cited. 

58. At a dinner-table — being placed at the bottom, while all the 
choicest and liveliest people are thrown to the top — you longing to be 
among them, and to join their flights of fancy, instead of grinding along, 
with your neighbors at the drowsy end of the table, in their broad- 
wheeled wagons, on the milestone road of matter-of-fact. 

Tes. Not to be endured — any more than another situation 
not very unlike it. 

59. Falling among a junto of lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or 
naval captains, &c, (all, except yourself, of one profession,) who instantly 
and hotly begin to discuss the driest and most technical points relating to 
their causes, cases, speculations, battles, &c, (as the case may be,) without 
granting you one merciful pause of hostilities during the whole evening : 
rascals ! but the lawyers are the worst, when they set about it, because 
they have the freest use of their tongues : I have more than once fallen 
into their clutches, and as often muttered between my teeth — 



these are Counsellors, 



That feelingly persuade what I am !" 

and that is, the most miserable dog alive, till I can get out of their com- 
pany. 

60. Sight-seeing for a day, with an enthusiastic showman ; or, being 
showman for a day to an enthusiastic party of sight-seers. 

61. While you are attentively listening to the information or opinions 
of a well-stored man, being perpetually pestered by a popinjay at your 
elbow, who claws you away from your nourishment, and forces you to 
swallow his froth. 

62. Feeling called on, as host, to amuse a discontented old maid, who 
" don't dance," (for a very good reason,) and being obliged to respond to 
her acrid remarks on affectation in general, though without any open par- 
ticular application to the girls enjoying themselves all around. 

Ned Tes. 1 know who you mean, father. Miss Ann 
Thropical, isn't she 1 
Tes. Very. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 93 

There's one pathy for all diseases, we all employ when we can get it. Sympathy. 

63. The sort of anxiety about all your motions and purposes, which is 
shown by certain persons, with whose insinuated interrogatories you have 
to fence for a whole evening together. 

Tes. Fence ! — what, when you have not a cudgel, I sup- 
pose ; that's my weapon upon such occasions. 

64. Eeceiving the condolences of one whose manner and countenance 
confess, against his orders, that his heart is in a broad grin. 

65. Just as you have comfortably seated yourself with a party who 
have met by long appointment, and who are all the favorites of each 
other — hearing the servant announce a person who is the favorite abomi- 
nation of the whole set, yet who evidently shows, at his entrance, that he 
has been plotting an agreeable surprise for you. 

66. At breakfast — hearing a good old lady detail, at full length, her 
last night's long dull dream, affording nothing more remarkable than the 
usual chaos of conclusions without premises, and that sort of topsyturvy, 
tangled account of the flattest incidents of common life which we could all 
give every morning, if we did not make all possible haste to forget the 
nonsense as soon as we have recovered our senses ; but this is not all, for 
as soon as she has, at length, brought her idiotic narrative to an end, and 
you begin to breathe again, your attention is once more laid in irons, while 
she buckles to the interpretation of it in all its parts ! 

67. A fellow who treats you in all respects (the fee excepted) like his 
physician ; unreservedly laying before you, while he is helping you at 
dinner, all the minutest particulars of his most revolting ailments, from the 
first attack down to the present moment : 

" Morborum quoque te causas, et signa docebo."* — Virg. 

68. "Walking in a wind that cuts to the bone, with a French or Ger- 
man narrative companion, whose mind and body cannot move at the same 
time ; or, in other words, who, as he gets on with his stories, thinks it 



now will I rehearse 



The birth and symptoms of each sore disease. 



94 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A calf tied to a waggin' tongue, by a halt-er without a bitt of compunction. 

necessary, at every other sentence, to stand stock still, face about, and 
make you do the same ; then, totally regardless of your shivering impa- 
tience to push on, refuses to stir an inch, till the whole of his endless 
thread is fairly -wound out : 

" Dixit, et adversi contra stetit ora." 

Tes. " Juvenci ;" — pray don't leave out that word ; for 
what a calf must you be to stand still for him ! if you'd move 
on he'd follow : — such a fellow, with all his love of a dead 
halt, would rather tell his stories at full speed than let you 
escape them, take my word for it. 

69. After a long and animated debate with a friend, in the dark, and 
just as you have drawn forth all your strongest arguments, and are 
beginning exultingly to infer from his long silence that you have com- 
pletely worsted him, and that he has not another word to say — receiving 
his answer in a strong, steady snore, which shows him to have been in a 
sweet sleep for the last quarter of an hour. 

TO. In a ball-room — after long sitting, in profound meditation, on the 
extreme edge of a form, with only one other person at the farther end, 
being suddenly recalled from your absence by finding that you are amusing 
the company with an involuntary somerset, brought on by the abrupt 
departure of your counterpoise ; the bench (which had remained perfectly 
gentle, as long as it earned double) seizing the opportunity of throwing 
its astonished rider, without further ceremony, by furiously rearing at one 
end, and plunging at the other. 

71. Being called in as an umpire in a matrimonial quarrel, which 
leaves you the choice of splitting on one of the six following rocks, viz. : — 

1. That of remaining silent — (for which both parties hate you ; each 
supposing that you secretly favor the other). 

2. That of pronouncing that both are in the wrong — (for which you 
are, obviously, hated by both). 

3. That of insinuating that both may be in the right — (hated again 



, 



THE MISERIES OF HITMAN- LIFE. 95 

De vinculo matrimonii. 

on both sides : each being more enraged at your contre, than grateful for 
your pour). 

4. That of defending the lady at the expense of the gentleman — (still 
hated by both ; by her, for attacking her caro sposo, whom she will suffer 
no one to despise but herself; by him, for siding with the enemy). 

5. That of defending the gentleman at the expense of the lady — (this 
case is, inversely, the same with the last). 

6. That of endeavoring to make peace, by treating the matter " en 
badinage" — (for which both are far too much in earnest, as well as far too 
eager for victory, not to hate you most of all). The best course, perhaps, 
if you cannot steal away, is to be taken with a sudden and violent fit of 
the toothache, which may last ad libitum. 

Tes. Your concluding misery takes in two parties, and 
should be divided between us : one moiety for you as a 
bachelor, and the other for me as a Benedict. 

Sen. I " remember those that are in bonds, as bound with 
them." 

Ned Tes. The bonds are like mort-gaye bonds in some 
respects; but sometimes they bear no interest, — when the 
principle is all that holds them. 

Sen. I can't help congratulating myself, however, since 
you mention it, on being the consultee in the case, and not 
the consultor. 

Tes. Nonsense, my dear sir. You have all the pains of 
the quarrel, without any of the delights of making up, which 
follows in natural succession. 

Sen. I'll dispense with them, I thank you ; and sustain 
myself under the dispensation, since the only way to ex- 
perience them is, to quarrel with one's wife, and to do that 
one must have a wife. I'm not dissipated myself, and am 
not anxious that my property should be. A married man's 



96 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



A father, tend-er to his offspring. 



babies use up the money he earns by his labor, and destroy 
the rest he earns by his weariness. 

Ned Tes. He has to cry " by, by," literally, to them all 
night, and they cry " buy, buy," figuratively, to him all day. 

Se?i. I say, hurrah for the bachelor ! " Long may he 
wave," as they say of the star-spangled banner — i. e., waive 
all claims to untried privileges. And with that sentiment 
we'll close, if you have got through with your budget, as I 
have with mine. 

Tes. Well, I should hope we had come to the end ! 

Sen. As to social miseries 




" THE CUP IS FULL !' : 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIVE. 97 

Library troubles. The handsomer a book is, the more it seems open to in-speck-tion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Library troubles. The handsomer a book is, the more it seems open to in-speck- 
tion. — A book bound to be an annoyance in some way. — Magazine literature. 
A magazine of litter at your disposal. — Sealing miseries which ought to " make 
the very walls cry out." — The " cacoethes scribendi" must have been among the 
" Jesta Eomanorum." — Most authors write an infamous short-hand. Sin-copy 
personified. — The printer is awthor-ized. to offer the incredulous convincing proofs. 

Sen. We have no subject booked for to-day. 

Tes. Let us subject books, themselves, to our miseries. 
They have often enough subjected us to theirs. 

Sen. Well, here we are, in the library, the very dominions 
of our theme, and these shelves are the very palace of the 
realm. 

Ned Tes. There are a great many pages weight on the 
palace. 

Sen. We should not have to look far for miseries if their 
services could be transferred to us, and each page autkor-ized 
to set down its own. 

1. Reading over a passage in an author, for the hundredth time, with- 
out coming an inch nearer to the meaning of it at the last reading than at 
the first ; then passing over it in despair, but -without being able to enjoy 
the rest of the book, from the painful consciousness of your own real or 
supposed stupidity. 

2. As you are reading drowsily by the fire, letting your book fall into 
the ashes, so as to lose your place, rumple and grime the leaves, and 
throw out your papers of reference; then, on rousing and recollecting 
yourself, finding that you do not know a syllable of what you have been 
winking over for the last hour. 

5 



98 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A book bound to be an annoyance in some way. 

3. In reading a new and interesting book, being reduced to make a 
paper-knife of your finger. 

4. Unfolding a very complicated map in a borrowed book of value, 
and, notwithstanding all your care, enlarging the small rent you originally 
made in it, eveiy time you open it. 

Sen. Apropos of maps : — 

5. Hunting on a cold scent, in a map for a place — in a book for a 
passage — in a variety of dictionaries for a word — thrown out at last quite 

at fault. 

6. Reading a comedy aloud, " by particular desire," when you are 
half asleep, and quite stupid. 

7. In attempting, at a strange house, to take down a large book from 
a high, crowded shelf, bringing half the library upon your nose. 

8. Mining through a subject, or science, "invita (or rather exosd) 
Minerva," — purely from the shame of ignorance. 

9. Receiving, " from the author," a book equally heavy in the literal 
and the figurative sense ; accompanied with entreaties that you would 
candidly set down in writing your detailed opinions of it in all its parts. 

10. Reading a borrowed book so terribly well bound, that you are 
obliged to peep your way through it, for fear of breaking the stitches, or 
the leather, if you fairly open it ; and which, consequently, shuts with a 
spring, if left a moment to itself. 

11. Yes; or, after you have long been reading the said book close by 
the fire, (winch is not quite so ceremonious, as you are about opening it,) 
attempting in vain to shut it, the covers violently flapping back in a 
warped curve — in counteracting which you crack the leather irreparably 
in a dozen places. 

Ned Tes. There is one way I wish some borrowed books 
I know of were bound. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 99 

Magazine literature. A magazine of litter at your disposal. 

Sen. How is that, Ned ? 

Ned Tes. Homeward bound. 

Sen. Ha, ha ! That would be a time to keep carnival 
indeed. 

Ned Tes. Which would not be appropriate while the 
books were keeping Lent. 

Sen. That brings us by no violent transition to the next 
misery on the file. 

12. On taking a general survey of your disordered library, for the 
purpose of re-arranging it — finding a variety of broken sets, and odd 
volumes, of valuable works, which you had supposed to be complete ; — 
and then, after screwing up your brows upon it for an hour, finding your- 
self wholly unable to recollect to whom any one of the missing books has 
been lent, or even to guess what has become of them ; and, at the same 
time, without having the smallest hope of ever being able to replace them. 
— Likewise, 

13. Your pamphlets and loose printed sheets daily getting ahead, and 
running mountain high upon your shelves, before you have summoned 
courage to tame them, by sorting and sending them to the binder 

14. As an author — those moments during which you are relieved from 
the fatigues of composition by finding that your memory, your intellects, 
your imagination, your spirits, and even the love of your subject, have all, 
as if with one consent, left you in the lurch. 

15. In coming to that paragraph of a newspaper, for the sake of which 
you have bought it, finding, in that only spot, the paper blurred, or left 
white by the press. 

16. Reading newspaper poetry, which, by a sort of fatality which you 
can neither explain nor resist, you occasionally slave through, in the midst 
of the utmost repugnance and disgust. 

17. As you are eagerly taking up a newspaper, being yawningly told 
by one who has just laid it down, that " there is nothing in it ;" or the said 



100 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Sealing miseries which ought to " make the very walls cry out." 

paper sent for by the lender, at the moment when you are beginning to 
read it. 

18. Having your ears invaded all the morning long, close a£ your study 
window, by the quack of ducks, and the cackle of hens, with an occasional 
bass accompaniment by an ass. 

19. Writing a long letter, with a very hard pen, on very thin and very 
greasy paper, with veiy pale ink, to one whom you wish — I needn't say 
where. 



20. On arriving at that part of the last volume of an enchanting novel, 
in which the interest is wrought up to the highest pitch — suddenly finding 
the remaining leaves, catastrophe and all, torn out. 

21. Burning your fingers with an inch of sealing-wax ; and then drop- 
ping away the dime to which you are reduced by the want of a seal. 

22. In writing — neither sand, blotting paper, nor a fire, to dry your 
paper ; so that, though in violent haste, you sit with your hands before 
you, at the end of every other page, till the ink thinks proper to dry of 
itself ; or toiling your wrist, for ten minutes together, with a sand-glass 
that throws out two or three damp grains at a time, and, in consequence 
of such delay — (but this calamity deserves a separate commemoration) — 

23. Losing the po9t ; and this, when you would about as willingly lose 
your life. 

24. Emptying the ink-glass, (by mistake for the sand-glass,) on a 
paper which you have just written out fairly, and then widening the mis- 
chief by applying restive blotting-paper. 

25. Putting a wafer, of the size of a half-dollar piece, into a letter 
with so narrow a fold, that one half of the circle stands out in sight, and 
is presently smeared over the paper by your fingers in stamping the con- 
cealed half. 

26. Writing on the creases of paper that has been sharply folded. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 101 

The " cacoctbes scribendi " must have been among the " Jesta Eomanorum." 

27. In sealing a letter — the wax in so very melting a mood, as fre- 
quently" to leave a burning kiss on your hand, instead of the paper ; next, 
when you have applied the seal, and alL at last, seems over, said wax 
voluntarily "rendering up its trust," the moment after it has undertaken it. 
So much for " Fyn sigellak ; well brand, en vast houd !" 

28. Writing at the top of a veiy long sheet of paper, so that you 
either rumple and crease the lower end of it with your arm against the 
table, in bringing it lower down, or bruise your chest, and drive out all 
your breath, in stretching forward to the upper end. 

Ned Tes. Long as it is, to begin with, you find it in creases 
as you go on down. 

29. Straining your eyes over a book in the twilight, at the rate of 
about five minutes per line, before it occurs to you to order candles ; and 
when they arrive, finding that you have totally lost the sense of what you 
have been reading, by the tardy operation of getting it at piecemeal. 

30. Attempting to erase writing ; but, in fact, only scratching holes in 
the paper. 

31. Writing at the same rickety table with another, who employs his 
shoulder, elbow, and body more actively than his fingers. 

32. Writing, on the coldest day in the year, in the coldest room in the 
house, by a fire which has sworn not to burn ; and so, perpetually dropping 
your full pen upon your paper, out of the five icicles with which you 
vainly endeavor to hold it. 

33. A pen that makes nothing but blots — that seems to be made 
solely for a medium to receive the ink from the inkstand, and scatter it 
over the sheet, putting it in deep mourning. 

Ned Tes. A pen of a pen-sieve turn. 

34. To drop your gold pen on the floor, and pick it up with the points 
curled up, so as to resemble the things the children make out of dandelion 
stalks, and call " rams' horns." 



102 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Most authors write an infamous sliort-hand. Sin-copy personified. 

35. While writing with a pencil, to dash the point into the inkstand 
through absence of mind. 

36. Wnting with ink of about the consistency of pitch, which leaves 
alternately a blot and a blank. 

3 *l. "Writing a long letter with one or more of the cut fingers of your 
light hand bundled up ; or else (for more comfort) with your left hand. 

Tes. The miseries of writing lead naturally to the miseries 
of printing, if we only knew any thing about it. 

Sen. Yes ; and the more miserable the former, the more 
the latter must have to complain of. Many an unfortunate 
" Jour" could tell us of poor men, whose time is their money, 
spending half of it in making out illegible "copy," and the 
other half in correcting what they had set up, because no 
mortal man (not even a printer) could guess right at the 
author's meaning the first time. 

Ned Tes. And the foreman could tell of teaching the trade 
to a boy of a ^n-ous turn ; which, curiously enough, is rather 
conducive to profanity than piety in the teacher. 

Tes. If our mass of scraps were ever to go to the print- 
er, we had better save a place to put in what he has to say 
about his troubles, for he certainly would experience them 
all! 

Sen. But what shall we attack next time ? 

Tes. My friend. Can we — dare we make what we eat 
and drink the subject of thought for one sitting 1 

Sen. Testy, pardon my weakness, but spare me this. — 

" Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." 

Foolhardiness is not bravery. There are mysteries into 
which it is not meant that we should inquire. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



103 



The printer is author-ized to offer the incredulous convincing proofs. 

Tes. Still I don't like the idea of turning back, after 
having marched up to the citadel. No, no ; we'll enter, and 
do our duty without shrinking. 

Ned Tes. As the boys always say to both sides in a fight, 




GO IN AND WIN. 



104 TRE MISERIES OF HUMAN- LIFE. 

Eating annoyances. The Devil sends cooks, so there's the devil to pay. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Eating annoyances. The Devil sends cooks, so there's the devil to pay. — The cheap 
eating-house in two phases. Din or dinner. — The most thriving bug in New York, 
except hum-bug. An enc-roach-ment on our liberties. — The upper 10,000 vs. the 
lower 490,000 for lie-ability and reliability. — An imported article of domestics. — 
The brick-in-hod-and-in-hat-carrying race's aptness for all sorts of fabrication. — 
The declension of boarding-houses favorable to the conjugation of bachelors. — A 
moving theme. Con-fusion, i. e., a melting together. — Boarding-houses, not to be 
accused of un-chary-table-ness. — Efforts at carving proving rather a hindrance than 
a Kelp. — Specimens of goldrbaring quartz from the dough-minions of the baker. — 
A formal dinner. Courses that are not race-courses. — The binn, proved to be a 
sell, by the hermit that eomes out. — A good roll on the carpet — buttered side 
down. — Contrariness is the won't of things. "What's a-curd to sour your temper ? — 
The cold cbairy-teas of the world ! — Beer miseries — that have nothing to do with 
the berry-ing that follows. — A preparation sooted to the most fastidious taste. 
Making a mull of it. 

Sen. The Table ought to furnish good fare for our mis- 
eries to fatten and increase on. 

Tes. So it would, except that it is so intimately connected 
with all the rest. Travelling, boarding, society, &c, all look 
to the universal operations of eating and drinking as opening 
assailable points for their efforts against the comfort of man- 
kind. However, it is worth while to try a few, even at the 
risk of some repetition of miseries included under other 
heads. So let us devote this chapter exclusively to the table. 

Ned Tes. It's " all a board that's going." By the by, the 
Chapter on the Table ought to be illustrated ynth'plates. 

Tes. {in perfect innocence* of his soil's duplicity of mean- 

* Innocence in no sense but that, however ; for if Ned had had more 
punishment in the past, he would not have perpetrated so many punnish 
meanings in the present. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 105 

The cheap eating-house in two phases. Din or dinner. 



ings.) Yes, a good cut or steel-engraving would be very ap- 
propriate to- set off the dullness of a dinner misery. But 
Mrs. T. ought to be here to start us off with some of the 
agonies of a hostess ; such as seeing the appearance of her 
pretty and tasteful table ruined by the inopportune oversetting 
of a gravy-boat, &c, &c. 

Sen. Even the best of us are subject to such accidents. 

Ned Tes. Clergymen themselves sometimes forget the 
respect due to the cloth. 

Sen. Boarding-houses should not be excluded. They are 
2>articeps criminis with all feeding discomforts, especially 
eating-houses. These belong together as naturally as mutton 
and turnips. 

Tes. Thank heaven, the reign of both is over, as far as I 
am concerned, since I went to housekeeping. 

Ned Tes. You are no longer under the dine-nasty of 
eating-houses 

Tes. Nor bored with another family under the same 
roof. 

Sen. Well do i remember the time, Testy, when it was 
" neck or nothing" with me between a cheap eating-house, or 
no dinner ! I have scarcely the heart to abuse them, on that 
account ; but I can tell you how one would strike me now, 
without denying heartfelt and stomach-felt obligations to them 
in times gone by. 

1. The noise is deafening. Every body is in a hurry — money-taker, 
carvers, waiters, and guests. Eveiy thing is hot and smoking, waiters 
included, as they rush back and forth as if possessed, each bringing six, 
seven, or eight plates of food arranged, with complicated ingenuity, on one 
red hand and naked arm, while the other hand grasps twelve, fourteen, or 
sixteen knives and forks to match. Then when he turns back, he roars 
out the names of the incongruous dishes his next load is to be composed 
of. " Tew plates rose-beef — rose porkanonions — plumhard — bolasoop — 

5* 



106 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The most thriving bug in N. Y. except hum-bug. An enoroach-ment on our liberties. 

fried clams — Indian-both-kinds," &c. Four times have the other three 
places at your table been emptied and filled while you were taking your 
moderate meal, and twelve people have dined, orders given, food swal- 
lowed, and leavings cleared away within four feet of you ! 

Sen. That is a specimen of the dinner disagreeable. Now 
if you want one of the dinner disgusting, go in the latter part 
of the afternoon to the same place. 

2. All is silence and solitude, reminding one of a desert rather than a 
dinner. The owner is readiug a paper behind his money desk, the waiters 
are congregated in the dim distance^ and the chairs are all turned up with 
their seats on the tables and tbeir legs in the ah. One of them is turned 
down for your accommodation. If there is a table-cloth, it looks like a 
faintly-colored map of the world. If there is none, the waiter wipes off 
the table with an air disgustingly brisk, and a damp cloth that leaves a 
track of its wrinkles, inevitably suggesting hair to the squeamish looker-on. 
The butter has no knife in it, but probably has had many a one during 
the day. It is of the consistency of mud, and some water, that was ice 
hours ago, surrounds it, making a perfect puddle. The knife leaves a 
distinctly marked continent on the map where you wipe it, and the fork 
has three tines and two deposits of black dust between. When the 
dinner arrives, the roast veal (your abomination, and the last thing they 
have left) is very pale, and looks decidedly unwell, though fever certainly 
is not what is the matter with it. It has no more appearance of steam 
than the palm of your hand ; and yet it has seen a good deal of cooking 
in its day, if four hours of lukewarmness can be so called. You roll up 
your eyes in despair, and they encounter an enormous cockroach prome- 
nading the brim of your hat, as it hangs, and calmly contemplating the 
scene ! 

Tes. What a blast ! The eating-houses would show but a 
" beggarly account of empty boxes" to-morrow, if all their 
customers were to see this last misery. 

Sen. I am glad they will not, then ; for this particular 
class of restaurants has some pleasant points about it. Pro- 
vision is made so cheaply there for the poorest. A man 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 107 

The upper 10,000 vs. the lower 490,000 for lie-ability and reliability. 

must be very hungry whom a shilling spent there would leave 
unsatisfied. And, although this advantage brings there, of 
course, the very lowest class of industrious society, yet each 
man or boy, apprentice or journeyman, or whatever he may 
be, is trusted to state his own account to the clerk, and pay 
for it, with no check on his veracity. This is a feature that 
gives me real pleasure to see, as it adds one to the many 
proofs we have of the honesty and honor of that class of 
Americans, even in this great, mixed-up, corrupt city. 

Tes. Well, I'm glad you find it so. For my part, I se© 
much more of dishonesty, trickery, suspicion, and such little 
meannesses as we were speaking of in a former sitting, than 
of the proofs you mention. 

Sen. Very possibly. But consider how far these are to 
be charged on the particular class I spoke of. 

Tes. Robberies and burglaries are more common than 
ever, and, what is perhaps still more significant — no arrests- 
without rewards ! 

Sen. Ah, there you attack the government, which is inde- 
fensible. Does it not rather show what a people it is, when 
such a government is sufficient ? We'll serve them out some 
day. Just now we are otherwise occupied. 

3. Changing your boarding-house, and, on the charitable recommenda- 
tion of a friend, (not made in charity to you,) finding yourself ensconced in 
a high, cheap house, smelling of paint and pine, and to which the epithet 
" brand-new" is exactly appropriate. The height of the house and of the 
charges, however, made up for by the lowness of the people you are 
thrown with : — new in their business, and bringing to it exaggerated 
notions of the necessity of self-consideration to prevent being overreached 
by the " sharp Yorkers." People who start with the idea that you will 
tiy to get just as much out of their house as you can. 

Tes. That is one of thosa ideas that bring about their own 



108 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

An imported article of domestics. 

consummation, for I should certainly try to get myself out as 
soon as possible. 

Ned Tes. As soon as you had found them out, they would 
find you " out, and not expected back," in spite of their plans 
for taking you in. 

Sen. Reduced gentle-folks seem the very people for that 
profession, just as the London Quarterly kindly hints that 
their daughters, are made for governesses. Our selfishness 
would always be glad to find that our hosts had come down 
to that station rather than have them of those who had risen 
to it. " They are so much easier to deal with." And the 
sharper ones would have got out of us a great deal, that it is 
generosity to give to the others ! O human nature ! 

Tes. Well, it is not that entirely. The under-bred ones 
are so intimate and familiar with the servants as to make 
them of little service to you, except as temper-trials. They 
are too smart for their business, and either answer " of 
course" to your directions, or else differ with you as to what 
is to be done. This state of mind is worse than the most 
stolid stupidity in a domestic. 

Sen. Infinitely worse. 

Tes. And that is saying a great deal, when you consider 
how much stupidity means in a raw immigrant. 

Ned Tes. Raw specimens, indeed, but not at all rare. 

Tes. There are four bells hanging in my kitchen, and our 
chambermaids, (and they are neither few nor far between — 
not like angels' visits in any respect, in fact,) our chamber- 
maids, literally, never learn which room each bell belongs to. 

Ned Tes. No matter how often they are tolled. 

Tes. They stop at the front and back parlors, and the back 
bedroom, before they answer the bell of my room, which is 
the second floor front ! 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 109 

The brick-in-hod-and-in-hat-carrying race's aptness for all sorts of fabrication. 

Ned Tes. You have had a bell made for every chamber, 
now you will have to have a chambermaid for every bell. 
/ should like to bespeak belles for chambermaids, at the 
same time, in place of the hags our house is usually em- 
bellished with. 

Tes. However, never doing any thing she is not told to, 
goes far toward atoning for a girl's rarely doing the thing she 
is told to. But, O Sensitive, there is one thing that dullness 
can neither atone for nor prevent — one art, that we most of 
us consider rather difficult to practice well ; that even the 
stupidest native of a certain isle, often described as " dear " 
and " green," is proficient in, and plies, naturally — consistent- 
ly — ingeniously — industriously — enthusiastically. As a late 
writer has strongly expressed it : " The whole nation, from 
the peer in his ermine to the peasant in his cot, will lie." 

Sen. I understand you. The nation referred to is prolific 
in patriots, pat-riots, and potatoes, and the last is the only one 
of their staples that ever fails. I have often thought that the 
harp should be scratched out from their national emblem, and 
a certain kindred musical instrument substituted — adding 
another to the queer list of heraldic puns. 

Tes. That would be as unkind a cut as the one of Dean 
Swift's, who, as he says himself, 

" Left the little wealth he had 
To found a house for fools and mad ; 
To show, by one satiric touch, 
No nation needs it half so much." 

Ned Tes. But not more severe than adopting the triple- faced 
sham-rock ; which insinuates that there is no subject, however 
hard and unpromising, but they can make a deception of. 

" Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." 



110 TEE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The declension of boarding-houses favorable to the conjugation of bachelors. 

They find fictions — 

Good ones in stones, and some in every thing. 

Tes. All this, however, is aside from the subject in hand. 
Let us " take board" and pursue it to the death. 

Ned Tes. Bored to death with a vengeance. 

Tes. If there is any thing worse than boarding in an estab- 
lishment just started, it is living in one just going to stop. 
The indifference, low spirits, and preoccupation of the people 
after deciding on another business, and before breaking up the 
old, would furnish an inmate a full excuse for suicide. I 
wouldn't call it insanity if I were on the jury. 

Sen. I should say it indicated common sense to an uncom- 
mon degree. 

Ned Tes. I should go for a verdict, " In sanity" — in per- 
fect sanity. 

Tes. If I wished to change the condition of the most im- 
practicable old bachelor on earth, I would choose the month of 
April — no, Sensitive, not because it is led off by all-fools-day 
— that is an ill-natured bachelorism you would not venture 
upon if Mrs. Testy were in the room — nor yet because it is 
the natural mating-time for doves and other feathered bipeds, 
geese included ; but because I could then find, in this city, 
five hundred boarding-houses, whose keepers had determined 
to try something else after the first of May. Even suppose 
he stands that trial, he is sure to be moved by May-day. If 
he survives the regular New York May fete 

Ned Tes. May fate preserve him. 

Tes. If he lives through the first, he will not risk the delay 
of a second before resolving on a change of condition. My 
plan would be certain to succeed. I should not despair, even 
of you, Sensitive, if you boarded ! I should expect to see 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. Ill 

A moving theme. Con-fusion, i. e., a melting together. 

you transformed imo " an industrious, hard-working man, with 
a large wife and family," as the newspapers say, in one season 
of May confusion. 

Sen. May confusion seize on me, if you ever ,do ! Ha, ha, 
ha ! I'm not a man to give myself heirs. A menage first 
and a menagerie as soon afterwards as practicable, in the reg- 
ular course of nature, I suppose. No, no, Testy. You have 
faith to remove mountains, if you really believe what you 
say, and had better let it out to take the place of the Hoosac 
tunnel-borer. You married men are unanimous in railing 
against bachelorhood, because you have not the choice between 
the two states. As long as a man stays single, he has the 
choice between them, and no longer. / have liberty, discre- 
tion, freedom, in the matter. " My rights there are none to 
dispute." 

Ned Tes. That sentence is ambiguous. You mean, there 
are none to dispute a bachelor's rights. I rather think it 
ought to be rendered, a bachelor has no rights to be disputed. 

Sen. Let's change the subject. Revenons a nos moutons, 
although it is only to mutton cold, returning to boarding- 
houses, and to cut blocks with a razor, to try our wit on board- 
ing-house keepers. I have boarded for years, when I was a 
poor clerk. Did you ever, when you were young and used 
to do foolish things, board in a family " that didn't take board- 
ers V There are a great many people — even in this plain spok- 
en age of the world, when every thing is, or pretends to be, 
called by its right name, and its shortest, — who " allow a lim- 
ited number of their friends to become inmates of their fami- 
ly" for a consideration, and think themselves, in diplomatic 
phrase, entitled to the highest consideration. 

Tes. " Make yourself at home. We treat you without 
ceremony, quite as one of the family." How often do I hear 



112 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Boarding-houses, not to be accused of un-chary-table-ness. 

that ! Sometimes by way of substitute even for the cares of 
hospitality ! I always feel like answering that I form part 
of no family except my own, and that I prefer being treated 
with a little ceremony as a guest, as I should treat them in 
welcoming them at my house. Make myself at home indeed ! 
That was not what I came away from home for. 

Sen. But these boarding-house people, who do not take 
boarders, profess to treat you as neither more nor less than 
one of themselves. That they live up to the first part of their 
professions, you need no help in finding out. Your own 
nerves and senses would tell you, even if the lady did not 
continually remind you, that they are no more solicitous of 
your comfort than of each other's ; while universal experience 
tells us that they cannot in human nature do as much. To 
make up for the lack of that sympathy that nothing but a 
habitual family affection can establish — that they could not 
offer without it, and that you could not receive without 
it — all entertainers, whether for hire or for hospitality, ought 
to calculate on giving more luxuries and more personal 
attention. 

Tes. Very true. But don't, pray, give or get the idea 
that it can possibly be more than tolerable at the best. The 
life of a boarder is not living — it's only staying, after all, and 
always will be till there arises a more sensible and practica- 
ble race of boarding-house keepers. 

Wed Tes. People with fair common-sense abilities ivithout 
common sensibilities. 

Tes. Neither the boarding-house life nor the boarding- 
house keepers deserve the consideration you show them. 

Sen. There I disagree with you. I think they deserve a 
great deal more ; for — O Testy ! — put all our miseries of 
boarding into one scale, and I can put one in the other, of 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 113 

Efforts at carving proving rather a hindrance than a help. 

half-a-dozen words, that will make them kick the beam, as 
if they had a personal spite against it 

4. To be a boarding-house keeper ! 
Tes. Well, let them go. 

5. After having been very hungry all the morning, finding, as you sit 
down to an excellent dinner, that your appetite has secretly decamped. 

6. On entering the dining-room, half famished, with the fullest expec- 
tation of seeing the dinner on the table — not even the cloth laid. 

7. Sitting down, with a keen appetite, to a beef-steak, (and nothing 
else,) which proves to be completely charred by overdressing. 

Tes. Confound 'em ! — none of them ever attend to Mac- 
beth's receipt for dressing a beef-steak, though by much the 
best that ever was given. 

" when 'tis done, 'twere well 



If 'twere done quickly? 

8. In a college hall — sitting at dinner on a bench nailed to the floor, 
and this at such a distance from the table, (nailed down also,) that you 
feed in the position of a rower just beginning his stroke. 

9. Slicing at a large round of beef, (near which your Evil Genius has 
seated you,) with a very short-bladed knife, so as inevitably to grease its 
handle, your fingers, and the cuff of your coat ; the company, as if in a plot 
to drive you out of your senses, scarcely tasting of any thing else. 

Ned Tes. O, a long knife for a large joint, by all means ; 
both for nicety's sake, and because 

" Fortiter et melius magnets plerumque secat res ." 

10. After forwardly offering your services in cutting up a goose, being 
obliged to make a practical confession, before twenty watchful witnesses, 
that you have no genius for carving. 



114 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Specimens of gold-baring quartz from the dough-minions of the baker. 

11. Attempting to cut and help out cauliflower, or asparagus, with a 
spoon : — the fate of the cargo (which you had neglected to insure) is 
well known : ditto as to jelly, which instantly bids adieu to the spoon, and 
quivers like quicksilver about the cloth. 

12. The spinning plate — there is but one, and you always have it. 

13. Missing the way to your mouth, and drowning your breast in a 
bath of ice-water. 

14. The moment in which you discover that you have taken in a 
mouthful of fat, by mistake, for turnip. 

15. Finding a human hair in your mouth, which, as you slowly draw 
it forth, seems to lengthen ad infinitum. 

16. A strong twang of tallow, or onion, in your bread and butter, at a 
house where decorum forbids you either to splutter or sputter. 

Tes. Indeed — if a man mayn't " quarrel with his bread 
and butter" in this case, I don't know when he may ! For 
my own part, whenever mine is flavored in this way, I don't 
stop to think what house I'm in, I can tell you. 

17. Long after you have finished your own temperate meal, seeing 
the sixth or eighth plate of turtle, venison, &c, conveyed into a living 
larder immediately opposite to you. 

18. Grinding on upon tough sinewy meat with supposititious teeth. 

19. A stone lurking in your crust, which you crush with such violence 
as to drive out a tooth-filling and an oath at the same time. 

20. Laboring at a piece of meat (corned beef in particular) with a 
carving knife so blunt, that it does not penetrate above a hair's breadth in 
a dozen seesaws, and keeps slipping from its hold, leaving you no chance 
of getting a slice less than an inch thick ; and this is presently returned for 
a thinner one, which, if you are able to cut at all, you cut only by 
dividends. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 115 

A formal dinner. Courses that are not race-courses. 

21. Inviting a friend, (whom you know to be particularly fond of the 
dish,) to partake of a fine hare, haunch, <fec, which you have endeavored 
to keep exactly to the critical moment, but which is no sooner brought in 
than the whole party, with one nose, order it to be taken out. 

Ned Tes. It cari't be helped. 

22. Biting a piece of your cheek almost out, and then perpetually 
catching it between your teeth, during the remainder of your meal, and 
for a fortnight afterwards. 

23. At dinner, in the dog-days — seeing several copies of the grain of 
the servant's thumb printed off in a hot mist upon the rim of your plate. 

24. After having completely dined upon one or two things which you 
are not at all fond of — seeing your favorite dish, which had not been 
announced, brought in excellently dressed. 

25. Slipping your knife suddenly and violently from off a bone — its 
edge first shrieking across the plate, (so as to make you hated by yourself, 
and the whole company,) and then driving the plate before it, and lodging 
all its contents — meat, gravy, melted butter, vegetables, &c, &c. — partly 
on your own breeches, partly on the cloth, partly on the floor, but princi- 
pally on the lap of a charming girl who sits by you, and to whom you had 
been diligently endeavoring to recommend yourself. 

26. At a formal dinner — the awful resting time which occasionally 
intervenes between the courses. 

Ned Tes. 

" Inde alios ineunt, cursus aliosque re-cursus — 
Adversis spatiis /" — Yirg. 

27. After you have long been fingering and peeling fresh walnuts, 
looking about in vain for some of the skins, (all swept away,) for the pur- 
pose of rubbing off the stains : — nails unusually long. 

28. Dropping in upon a friend at the dinner-hour, upon the strength 
of his general invitation, and discovering, from the countenance and man- 
ner of his lady, that you'd better have waited for a particular one. 



116 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The binn, proved to be a sell, by the hermit that comes out. 

■ 

29. A fish-bone, or other substance, stuck between your two hindmost 
teeth ; then, in your endeavors to remove it with a toothpick, only wedging 
it tighter than ever. 

30. In decanting wine — receiving a hint that it is time to stop, from 
the liquor, as it suddenly gurgles down the sides of the full decanter over 
your hands and the floor. N". B. The like effects of the like want of 
caution in the still more terrible instance of filling: an inkstand. 



31. Triumphantly producing from your cellar the last remaining bottle 
of some choice old wine, previously announced to your friends as the boast 
of the binn ; but which, when decanted, shows an aspect so desperately 
cloudy, that no exposure to the fire can prevail upon it to brighten up. 

32. On receiving and opening several hampers of precious wine, just 
arrived from a great distance — finding that the bottles have almost all 
bled to death, in consequence of quarrelling and fighting by the way. 

Tes. So much for the comfort of sitting down to dinner ! 
But there are other meals, you know : so now 

" To breakfast, with what appetite we may." 

The less the better, indeed, on the following occasion, with 
which I will begin : 

33. To know, always, what you are to have for breakfast, by remem- 
bering what you had for dinner the day before, which your hosts do not 
take the trouble to hash, but serve a little warmed and much disfigured 
by wear and tear. 

Ned Tes. " Second 'dishin'," as the newsboys would say. 

34. On coming down late to a hasty breakfast — finding the last drop of 
water in your, kettle boiling away, the toast in the ashes, and the cat just 
finishing the cream. 

35. Making the hopeless circuit of the herb teas — sage balm rose- 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 117 

A good roll on the carpet— buttered side down. 

mary, &c, <fcc when the doctor has laid his paw upon your tea-chest; 
till you are, at last, left completely bankrupt in breakfast — 

Tes. As for myself, between the mischief to my nerves, 

if I do drink tea, and to my comfort if I do not 

Ned Tes. You may cry with Martial, 

"Nee TTEA-cum possum vivere, nee sine tea."* 

36. After having dealt carelessly -with honey at breakfast, being hur- 
ried away, without a moment allowed for washing your hands. 

Ned Tes. 

" Plus aloes quam mellis habet."f — Juv. 

37. In the depth of winter — trying in vain to effect a union between 
unsoftened butter, and the crumb of a very stale loaf, or a quite new one. . 

Sen. I have often wondered that neither the Inquisitors, 
nor the cannibal savages, when they have been out of tor- 
tures, have hit upon either of these. 

38. Letting fall (of course on the buttered side) the piece of roll, or 
muffin, on which you had set your heart. 

Ned Tes. 

" hceret lateri — lethalis !" — Virg. 

39. As you sit at breakfast — suddenly breaking down the back of 
your chair, and, in a failing attempt to save yourself in your fall, kicking 
up the table — with the comfort, however, of preserving the tea-urn, cups, 
plates, &c, &c. : all of which you deliver safely into the lap of the lady of 
the house, who sits opposite ! 



* Nee tecum possum vivere, nee sine te. Neither with thee can I live, 
nor without thee. — Bos. Johns. 

\ That savors more of the aloe than of the honey — more bitter than 

sweet. 



118 TEE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Contrariness is the won't of things. "What's a-curd to sour your temper? 

40. Being roused from a reverie at breakfast, by hastily swallowing a 
dose of very strong tea, in which both the cream and the sugar have been 
forgotten. 

41. Tiying often to harpoon a floating pat of butter, which, as often, 
slips aside, or ducks and shirks under your knife ; no effect but that of 
splashing up the water against your hand : 

" dum te fugeret per flumina, prseceps — 



Excidet — aut in aquas tenues dilapsus abibit." — Virg. 

42. A teapot which won't pour except through the top — what you 
intend for your cup trickling down your fingers into your sleeve, and over 
the cloth. 

43. As you are shaking a muffineer, (ditto a pepper castor at dinner,) 
the cover springing off — the whole contents instantly following the lively 
example. 

Ned Tes. 

" agmine facto, 

Qua data porta ruunt" — Virg. 

44. "Weak, bad, cold, cloudy coffee, with poor milk, and but little of 
that Likewise, tea made with smoke, as well as water. 

45. On pouring the milk into your tea, to see it rise to the surface in 
small curds, while the body of the liquid remains transparent 

46. "Venturing upon a small egg with a large spoon, and so feeding 
your chin, your neckcloth, your fingers, and the cloth ; every thing, in 
short — but your mouth ! 

Ned Tes. This is " ab ovo usque ad mala" with a ven- 
geance ! — 

Tes. But we have had enough of breakfasting. There 
remains only one meal more ; and we have too often " svpp'd 
full with horrors," to doubt that we shall find a few more 
miseries in that quarter. 

Sen. At one of those miserable modern substitutes for the 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



119 



The cold chairy-teavS of the world 1 



old -fashioned tea-party, where they give every man his own 
cover to hold, 

47. When you are fixed with a cup in one hand, and a plate in the 
other — to have anything happen ; especially an irresistible inclination to 
sneeze come over you, which you foresee will come to a climax before you 
can reach the piano or mantelpiece, set down your incumbrance, and get 
out your handkerchief 

Ned Tes. Lap-tea is only fit for cats and other animals 
with the same unsatisfactory drinking apparatus. 

Tes. Tea is not much of a meal, any way ; take it off the 
tea-table, and it is good for nothing. 

Ned Tes. Though, on the contrary, the tea-table becomes 
eatable when the T is taken off. 

Sen. Men's knees you can scarcely call laps. 

Ned Tes. They can col-lapse themselves if you try to im- 
pose i pjn them. To balance a teacup is not 




A KNEES-Y TASK. 



120 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Beer miseries— that have nothing to do with the herry-ing that follows. 

48. In eating lobster — getting the lady, or half-a-dozen of the dead 
man's fingers, into your mouth, before you are aware. 

49. The repeated slips of a blunt oyster-knife against the palm of your 
left hand, as you are dislocating your right shoulder with laboring in vain 
at the wide end of the shell. 

Tes. Very proyoking, certainly — were it not that some of 
your oysters pretty often make you amends for the stubborn- 
ness of others, by opening of themselves ! But, if you are 
fond of oysters, I'll give you enough of them. 

50. Supping upon roasted oysters — with the snatching, and burning, 
and hissing, and grinning, and cluttering, that go with it — leaving you no 
comfort but in thinking of the moment when all will be swept away, and 
the water-glasses brought round. 

Sen. The following I forgot to introduce among the de- 
lights of a dinner : 

51. The purgatorial interval after you have all dined, and before the 
servants have taken every thing (particularly themselves) away, and finally 
shut the door. 

Ned Tes. " Mixtis servitiis, et dissono clamore." — Tac. 

52. Cracking a hard nut with your teeth, and filling the gap left by 
the grinder you have knocked out, with black bitter dust. 

Tes. This is "worse than worst!" — more than even the 
demons themselves are able to bear : 

" they, instead of fruit, 



Chew'd bitter ashes, which th' offended taste 
With spatt'ring noise rejected." — Milt. 

53. When parched with thirst, opening your last bottle of spruce beer, 
and finding it so very good, that it first washes your face and hands, and 
then your walls and furniture, with the whole of its contents. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 121 

A preparation sooted to the most fastidious taste. Making a mull of it. 

Sen. Nay, the contrary is quite as bad, viz. : 

54. At the instant of drawing the cork, starting back from the eagerly 
expected burst of froth, but without the least occasion either for your 
hopes or fears — the liquor all remaining in the bottle as quiet as a lamb. 

55. In preparing mulled wine for yourself and friends — after it has 
remained the proper time upon the fire, and just as you are taking it off, 
and all are rousing for the regale — seeing an avalanche of soot plump into 
the pot 

56. While you are swallowing a raspberry, discovering by its taste that 
you have beeq so unhappy as to occasion the death of a harmless insect ! 

57. Your tongue coming in contact with the skin of a peach. 

Sen. Yes, or even the mind coming in contact with the 
idea ! 

58. Tour sensations about the throat and chest, after having too 
hastily forced down a piece of very hard diy biscuit — just as if you were 
swallowing a nutmeg-grater three or four yards long. 

Tes. Well, we have got through with the miseries of 
eating ; what comes next in order 1 

Sen. The miseries of digesting ; in real life. 

Tes. Ha, ha ! Very true. But those we must leave to 
the imagination — I'm afraid I ought to say the memory — of 
most people, with all the nauseous drugs the idea suggests. 

Ned Tes. 

May I my capacity ne'er so full fill, 0, 
That I have to sleep on a Hygeian pill-0. 



122 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Miseries domestic. House-cleaning. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

Miseries domestic. House-cleaning. — Houses were always coaled till the furnaces 
flue — to the rescue. — A. lock, no key. A chimney, smoky. A carpet-clawing. 
A blister-drawing. — Buil Ding — a nuisance, alone; and prolific in little Bills, be- 
sides. — The city most opposed to the introduction of gas. Spermaceti. — Trouble 

in a gas-tly shape — not to be made light of. — Candle miseries. There's no rest for 
the wick-ed. — The Augean stables. (Corruption from haw-gee-in' being ox- 
stables.)— The closing table, (though not the last,) not of contents but of discon- 
tents. — Misfortune's dyer— fast colors. An over-T-urn. — Dressing-room miseries. 
The love of dress — what an anomaly!— Bad habits ; the more they are broken, 
the worse they get — Bank ley in the nostrils makes rancor lie in the heart. — A 
brush with the bristles. The raiser of recollections of en-jaw-men ts. — Paring and 
re-paring till repairing is impossible. — Pantaloons. A fit — not like a glove, but 
like a convulsion. — A crumb— not of comfort. The penalty of Zoa/-ing in bed. — 
A coat changed from a beauty to ab-u-t — for ridicule. — A leak — more tearful even 
than an onion ! — Night-attacks of mosquitoes, &c, that make one regret the old 
" Knights in armor." — Cold weather. Nurses. (Both suggestive of Lap-land.) — 
After all, the worst thing about a bed is — getting up. — The stamp of ill-breeding. 



1. Getting up early on a cold, gloomy morning, (quite enough 
you'll say ; but that's not half of it,)- — Getting up early on a cold, gloomy 
morning, I say, and on running down into the breakfast-room for warmth 
and comfort, finding chairs, tables, shovel, poker, tongs, and fender, huddled 
into the middle of the room — dust flying in all directions — carpet tossed 
backwards — floor newly washed — window wide open — beeswax, brush, 
and rubber, in one corner — brooms, mops, and pails, in another — and a 
dingy maid on her knees, before an empty grate. 

Tes. There's a set of jewels for our cabinet of miseries ! 
— all of the first water, and in the rightest order for our use ! 

Sen. J had myself intended to open with another of the 
same species ; but you have struck me dumb. 

Tes. Pho, pho ! — let's have it; when a diamond does not 
come in the way, we must put up with a pearl. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 123 

Houses were always coaled till the furnaces flue— to the rescue. 

Sen. Well, the», if you won't despise me : ^ 

2. Having to pass the maid as she is scouring the stairs — to which I 
intended to add, seeing, hearing, or guessing any thing at all of the matter, 
when washing and drying are going on in the hous^ ; or, what is worse 
still, having to duck and flap your way through lines, or rather lanes, of 

clammy clothes, just hung out to diy. 

3. On coming into the room, frost-bitten — attempting to stir a very 
compact fire with a red-hot poker, which, from being worn to a thread 
towards the bottom, bends double at the slightest touch, without discom- 
posing a coal. 

Sen. Yes ; or, on the other hand, 

4. Raising them too much, when the grate is overcharged ; and so, 
notwithstanding all your caution, disposing the live coals over the carpet, 
and among the petticoats of the ladies. 

5. Feeling your arm and elbow cold ; and, on looking farther into the 
matter, perceiving that you have long been leaning in slop, which has 
dabbled you to the skin. 

6. Squatting plump on an unsuspected and unsuspecting cat in your 
chair. 

7. Visiting at a house long accustomed to a furnace, where the ideas 
of the inhabitants (as they always do) -have risen thermometrically ever 
since they had coal-fires ; as you have still. 

8. The vice versa of the above- 

9. At going to bed — after having toiled, scorched, and melted yourself, 
in raking out a large and obstinate fire, which, at last, you seem to have 
effected ; seeing it, as you turn round at the door, burning and roaring up 
far more fiercely than ever. 

1 0. In attempting to throw up cinders — oversetting and scattering them 
far and wide, by dashing the edge of the shovel, as if with a violent deter- 
mination, against the upper bar of the grate. 



124 THE MISERIES OF HUM AN LIFE. 

A lock, no key. A chimney, smoky. A carpet-clawing. A blister-drawing. 

11. Fumbling in vain at a rusty, refractory ^oor-lock, of which the 
hasp flies backwards, and there sticks ; so that you are at last obliged to 
leave the door flapping and whining on its unoiled hinge, and fanning you 
into an ague — your own fury furnishing the fever. 

12. Sitting for hours before a smoky chimney, like a Hottentot in a 
kraal ; then, just as your sufferings seem, at last, to be at an end — puff, 
puff ! — whiff, whiff ! — again, far more furiously than ever. 

13. "Waking, stiff and frozen, from a long sleep in your chair by the 
fireside ; then crouching closer and closer over the miserable embers, for 
want of courage to go up to bed ; and so, keeping in the cold to be warm ! 
— when you go at last, your candle flickers out in the passage, and you 
are left to grope your way, blundering, and breaking your shins at eveiy 
step, against the balusters ; every stair, too, creaking and groaning under 
your weight, though you tread as tenderly as possible, for fear of waking 
the house, consisting chiefly of invalids, whom you feel that you are 
rousing, one after another, from their dozes, as you pass their several doors. 

14. Elbowing both your candles off the table, and then setting them 
up in the shape of siphons. 

15. Toiling at a rotten cork with a broken screw, and so dragging it 
out piecemeal, except the fragments, which drop into the bottle. 

16. Grinding coals or cinders into the carpet, in turning upon your 
heel; then, after stooping, in a frenzy, to pick up the filthy fragments, and 
at last walking away satisfied that you have done so ; crashing fresh 
parcels of them in other parts, and so on. 

Ned Tes. A great injury to your property, and a grater to 
your feelings. 

17. After taking infinite pains to paste a drawing, or other choice 
thing, very nicely — seeing the paper, with all your pressing and smoothing 
in one pail;, start up in a thousand bulbous blisters in other places. 

18. Just as you have finished dressing yourself more nicely than 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 125 

Buil Ding — a nuisance, alone ; and prolific in little Bills, besides. 

usual, to receive company at dinner — creeping down into a dark, damp 
cellar, for wine ; and unexpectedly finding, from a sudden chill about the 
lower part of the leg, that you are going by water. 

19. Losing the keys of all your most private repositories; by which 
you suffer a double embarrassment — that you cannot, yourself, get at 
what you want ; and that they have, probably, fallen into the hands of 
others, who both can and will. 

20. After having ordered from town some articles of dress, furniture, 
ornament, (fee, to be made on some particular model, which you had most 
solicitously explained to the workman before you went into the coun- 
try — receiving it, at length, at the moment when it is most wanted, with 
this only drawback on your satisfaction, that it is so perversely wrong, in 
all possible respects, as to be absolutely useless ! 

21. Going on with a servant in whose honesty you have strong reasons 
for suspecting a leak, though not quite strong enough to warrant you in 
proceeding to a close charge, and search. 

22. Beginning your residence at the country-house to which you have 
just removed, before the repairs are finished — with the comfort of picking 
your way from one ruined room to another, through fragments of peeled 
mortar, broken bricks, scattered axes, adzes, chisels, <fec. ; and, at length, 
being invaded in the fortress of your study, and there pursuing your medi- 
tations to the sound of hammers, files, saws, tumbling walls, (fee, (fee. ; not 
to mention the manner in which you drag on your domestic existence for 
a long time, before half the furniture, utensils, (fee, from your late house, 
have arrived, to wit: bed-chambers blocked up with matted trunks, 
bureaus, (fee. ; not a curtain or carpet to cover the nakedness of the sitting- 
rooms, (fee, (fee Then for your eating accommodations — dinner dressed 
by the housemaid, with extempore spits, en attendant the arrival of the 
bona fide cook, and her apparatus ; every dish, as it is brought in, carrying 
a " noli me tangere" on the face of it, and, such as it is, being served up on 
the kitchen table, with a set-out of crockery from the same apartment — 
teaspoons to the salt-cellars, or rather the egg-cups their proxies — a man's 
white knife to a child's green fork, (fee, (fee ; no alliance as yet formed with 
the butcher, baker, carrier, (fee, (fee ; and lastly, when your time, with all 



126 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The city most opposed to the introduction of gas. Spermaceti. 

these loads upon it, begins to hang a little heavy upon your hands, neither 
a clock to strike it, nor a book to kill it ! — 

Sen. Why, my dear sir, you seem so much in your ele- 
ment, while treating this particular head of unhappiness, that 

I feel 

" my genius cow'd, 

As Antony's was by Caesar :" — 

however, " nitor in adversum" is a noble motto. To resume, 
then : 

23. To be startled from a nap in your chair by a dazzling blaze of 
light, "which, on examination, proves to proceed from your candles having 
been each fluted down on one side by a foot and a half of lobbing wick, 
which, having first flooded the table, and every thing upon it, in a torrent 
of sperm, descends in a cataract to the carpet. 

Tes. Why, there your candles have outshone mine ; for I 
was going to say — 

24. Reading or writing by one candle, and that so dim, that it would 
give no light, but for a fresh thief which rises in it every moment, and 
which perpetually calls you from your book, or letter, to poke it off: — 

Sen. In doing which you find your paper always ready to 
receive it. 

25. To find, as is inevitable, on introducing gas into your house, that 
your quarterly bill is an inscrutable dispensation — a mysteiy into which it 
is presumptuous to inquire. In the first place, it is about double in 
amount to your highest calculations. Then, though you detennine on a 
rigid economy in its use, and a reduction in price is advertised, you very 
probably find the second bill rather larger than the first ! 

26. On being waked up by an overpowering smell of gas, about one 
or two in the morning : to find that the neAV servant has blown out the hall 
light on going to bed. General headaches next day, of course. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 127 

Trouble in a gas-tly shape — not to be made light of. 

27. When you have a room-full of company, to have your gas, after a 
premonitory symptom or so, go out unconditionally, leaving you figura- 
tively in the dark as to the cause and the remedy, as -well as literally as 
to the fact. Either you have put too much water into the meter, or too 
little. 

28. Attempting to light a taper by a hot fire — the farther off you 
hold it, the longer it takes to light ; the nearer you hold it, the more the 
coals burn your fingers. 

29. Ditto by a lamp chimney, where the paper gets black and smokes 
furiously, and seems just on the point of ignition, for five mortal minutes. 

30. In default of a screw-driver, laboring with the back, or battering 
the edge, of a good knife, at a notch infamously wide and shallow ; so that 

• it slips out of its place a hundred times over, without moving the screw 
a hair's brmdth. Likewise — 

31. Hammering your own fingers, instead of a very short nail which 
you fumbliugly hold in them — said nail, when you do hit it, curling at the 
point, instead of entering the wall ; or losing its head, so that you cannot 
extract it : likewise, the head of the hammer violently flying off, so as to 
break a looking-glass, a friend's skull, &c, &c. 

Ned Tes. Hitting, if any nail, the thumb nail. 

32. Vainly hunting, a thousand times over, in every corner, crook, and 
cranny of the house, for something you have lost; till, at som%future 
period, when you have long abandoned the pursuit, the truant article 
appears of its own accord. 

Sen. Yes, but not until you have entirely ceased to want 
it. 

33. Your watch-key having worn itself round; so that it amuses you 
with spinning, by itself, upon its square pin, of which it was once so fond, 
as never to think of moving without it. 

Ned Tes. Horace, long before the invention of watches, 



128 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Candle miseries. There's no rest for the wick-ed. 

prophesied this misery very exactly, in his " mutat quadrata 
rotimdis." 

34. Finding, as you rise to take leave of a company, that you have 
been sitting for an Lour, with half the carpet dragged up by the hind legs 
of your chair ; or, seeing the same crime committed by another, whose 
awkwardness is far beyond the reach of admonition. 

35. The snuffers scattering their contents over the card-table ; while, 
in trying to remedy the affliction, you crush the black mischief into the 
green cloth, from which it spreads to the cards, and thence to your fingers, 
with the rapidity (and almost the fatality) of poison. Likewise — 

36. Carrying a flat candlestick in such a manner that the snuffers (not 
to mention the extinguisher) tilt off, open in their fall, and scatter their 
contents over the carpet. 

Sen. Which, although not a good conductor of heat, is a 
capital one of any dirt spilt upon it — spreading it all over its 
surface, as if by magic. 

Ned Tes. A car pet ought to be a good conductor. 

3*7. Dropping something, when you are either too lame or too lazy to 
get up for it ; and almost breaking your ribs, and quite throwing yourself 
down, by stretching down to it over the arm of your chair, without reach- 
ing it at last. 

38. The interval between breaking a pane of glass and the arrival of 
the glazier. — K B. The aspect of the apartment (your constant sitting- 
room) E. K E., and the wind setting in full from that quarter, at the crisis 
of the affliction ; glazier a drunkard, living seven miles off. 

39. Pulling at an elastic bell-rope, which you either break from the 
cramp, without sounding the bell, or tug repeatedly, (thinking that it does 
not ring, when it does,) so as to bring up a wrong servant. 

40. A pair of rusty tongs, which, in opening, stick astride, so that you 
cannot manage them with one hand ; and even when you have forced them 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 129 

The Augean stables. (Corruption from ha\v-gee-in,— being ox-stables.) 

with the help of the other, still will not meet at the pinching part, but let 
slip every coal that is at all smaller than your head. Likewise : seeing a 
good pair doubled and twisted by awkward handling. 

41. Flapping at an expiring fire with an asthmatic pah* of bellows. 

42. Scissors that pinch, instead of cutting. 

43. Bottling off liquors — and all the stooping, cork-haggling, finger- 
freezing, rim-hammering, bottle-breaking, stocking-slopping, nose-poison- 
ing, &c, which you have to go through for a whole morning together. 

^44. Grubbing in the spoiled key-hole of your locked trunk, or drawer, 
with the wrong key, which you presently spoil also ; and this, when it is 
of the utmost moment that you should instantly get at the thing wanted ; 
no blacksmith within many miles. 

45. Being told by your servant, at the beginning of a hard winter, 
that the coals -Sre ahnost out; then, on immediately ordering in a large 
supply, receiving for answer, that the coals are all locked up in the river 
by the frost ; but that, as soon as the cold weather is over, you may have 
any quantity you like ! 

46. A cupboard in the parlor in which you are making love — with 
the consequent perpetual intrusion of one prying servant after another, 
clattering among the shelves with glasses, tea things, (fee. ; and all this, just 
towards the crisis of reciprocal confessions ! 

4*7. Vainly attempting, when in great haste, to make a very hard lump 
of sugar melt double tides, by pushing and pressing it against the side of 
the tumbler ; no effect but that of slipping off the spoon with a jerk, and 
splashing up the hot liquor into your own eyes. 

48. Taking out your pencil on the road to make memoranda, and find- 
ing that the mineral has effectually eloped from the vegetable part of the 
instrument. 

49. Cleansing the Augean stables ; or, in other words, undertaking the 
labor of digesting in its proper place each of a thousand different articles, 

6* 



130 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The closing table, (though not the last,) not of contents but of discontents. 

of as many different uses, sorts, and sizes, (books, phials, papers, fiddles, 
mathematical instruments, drawings, and knick-knacks without end,) which 
have been for weeks or months accumulating upon the tables, chairs, and 
shelves of your library, and which no servant is able to set to rights ; so 
that you have been, yourself, obliged to await the tardy conjunction of 
activity and leisure, before you can enter upon the dreary drudgery of 
subduing them into arrangement. 

50. At dinner — dragging the table about the room for an hour, over 
an uneven floor, in hopes of coaxing it to stand on more than two legs, the 
remaining two hanging in the air. At length, when you are nearly 
destroyed already by the failure of all your efforts to persuade the floor 
and the table to make it up and be friends, suddenly giving yourself the 
coup de grace, by one fatal straightforward shove, which shuts in the leg 
on the opposite side, instantly followed by a thunderclap and earthquake, 
as the leaf drops, together with fruit-plates, sweetmeats, strawberries and 
cream, (fee, &c, &c, leaving you in a state of mind — but I forbear ! 

" Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto." 

Let it suffice to say that 

" Loud was the noise ! aghast was every guest ! 
The women shriek'd, the men forsook the feast !" — Detd. 

51. Rummaging for half an hour in a disorderly tool-box for a nail or 
screw, which, when you have bruised and soiled your fingers to your 
taste, you are, at last, obliged to give up as hopeless. 

52. Reposing a fatal confidence in the stability of the fender, by 
resting your feet upon it with a pressure inwards, as you advance your 
face towards the fire. 



Ned Tes. 



Pos.sint ut juvenes visere fervidi, 
Multo non sine risu, 
Dilapsam in cincres face-vcC 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 131 

Misfortune's dyer—; fast colours. An over-T-urn. 

53. Hearing and seeing the operation of shovelling cinders performed 
by a hardy and indefatigable hand — every scrape upon your ears sensibly 
stealing an inch from your span of life. 

54. Attempting to light a candle, with its short wick so effectually 
crushed down and buried into the body of the tallow, that it cannot be set 
up ; while, in stooping it to the flame of another candle, you only keep 
melting the grease in a stream over the table and carpet ; when you have, 
at length, caught a precarious glimmer, it is extinguished as soon as you 
have crept to the door, or (what is worse) to the stairs, " nescius aurse 
fallacis !" — this, three or four times over. At last, to be sure, the wick 
attains its proper length ; but, fair and softly ! this advantage is purchased 
at the exorbitant price of seeing the well of sperm overflow its sides, and 
pour down a bumper into the socket. 



55. Haggling the nails of your right hand with a pair of blunt scissors 
held in the left. 

56. Sitting, perforce, on a high, round-bottomed stool, when the chairs 
are all preoccupied. 

57. Discovering, as you sit down to cards with a strange party, that 
your hands, from having worn for the first time a pah - of black gloves, are 
as dingy as a dyer's. 

58. The handle of a full tea-cup coming off in your hand, as you are 
raising it to your mouth. 

Tes. The handle of a tea-cwp / what's that ? 

59. The handle of the tea-«m coming off in the servant's hand, as he 
is passing by you ! and this in such a manner, that though you break its 
fall with your leg, you, at the same time, break your leg Avith its fall — to 
say nothing of the contents, which, in my own case, I did not find of a 
veiy healing nature ! 

Ned Tes. Why, as to oversetting the urn, father, 



Versatur Urna, serius, ocyus," 



132 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN IHE. 

Dressing-room miseries. The love of dress— what an anomaly! 

you know. But the poor servant must feel as if he had umed 
his bread and butter — i. e., buried his only chance of getting 
a living. 

60. The waking up, on a sultry summer afternoon, having perversely 
lain down, though you knew how uncomfortable your nap would leave 
you ! After repeatedly refusing to wake, because the returning conscious- 
ness was of too wretched discomfort, the point comes when you can delude 
yourself no longer. Your first feeling is as if your collar had been taken 
off, dipped in warm water, and stuffed back again in wrinkles under your 
cravat, which itself has been transformed into a steam heating-pipe to 
keep up the temperature of the wet rag. Your pillow has no cold spot 
in it, and your eyelids feel as if they were made of cotton batting. To 
crown all, you have an indistinct idea of having heard the tea-bell some 
time before, and it is too dark to tell the wash-stand from the towel-rack. 

61. Endeavoring, with a brush, to coax up dust, cinders, and other 
abominables, from a low hearth, against a suddenly -rising ridge, which 
constantly keeps returning them upon your bauds. 

62. The machinery of the window-sash abruptly striking work, in 
consequence of the flat refusal of all its parts to act in concert any longer ; 
the leads skulking down in their holes, far below all sight and reach — the 
pullies resolutely standing out against all your efforts to turn them — the 
cords preternaturally bowing and courtesying out of their destined perpen- 
dicular — and the sash itself, instead of cheerfully and obsequiously waiting, 
as usual, for your guidance, now rudely and furiously slapping down, with- 
out a moment's warning, with the force (if not the effect) of a guillotine ; 
while, with all your lifting and lowering, and twitching and wheedling, 
you prove totally unable to compose the unhappy feuds which have thus 
suddenly and unaccountably broken out amongst the mechanical powers ! 

63. After putting on your clean shirt, finding that the two bottom 
buttons of the collar have absconded ; or, that they have been ironed into 
two or three bits of straggling ivory : no time to change. 

64. A coat tight and short in the sleeves. 



THE MISERIES OE HUMAN LIFE. 133 

Bad habits ; the more they are broken, the worse they get. 

65. Or pantaloons decidedly too long — suspenders stretched over your 
back like shoulder-braces. 

66. Shaving after a frosty walk, (when the face is pimpled, skin tender, 
and hand tremulous,) with cold pump-water, hard brush, ropy soap, and a 
blunt razor. Likewise, shaving with a blister behind each of your ears. 

67. Repeatedly hitching and breaking the teeth of a fine-toothed 
comb in the same tender place, the feelings of which you had already 
exasperated by trying to appease the itching with your nail. 

Ned Tes. 

" Jamque eadem digitis, jam pectine pulsat eburao." — Virg. 

68. After having dropped out your sleeve-button, without knowing it, 
rashly thrusting your hand into the arm of your coat, and so carrying the 
shirt-sleeve in a bunch up to the shoulder, leaving your arm raw, cold, and 
bare. 

69. While you are waiting for a fresh supply of tooth-brushes — 
battering your teeth with the ivoiy, and pricking your gums with the 
bristles of your old one, completely grubbed out in the middle ; its few 
remaining hairs starting off horizontally on all sides. 

Tes. Let me finish your picture with a touch of horror 
that shall petrify the beholder : 

70. The moment in which a misgiving comes over you, that a servant 
has clandestinely assisted you in wearing it out ! 

71. After sweltering for an hour, on a hot day, in an attempt to drag 
on a new and tight boot, being unable to get it on, for want of size ; or off, 
for want of a boot-jack. 

72. In hastily putting on your shirt, (people waiting for you at dinner,) 
stripping it in two ; no other clean. 

Ned Tes. 
" qua se medio trudunt— tenues rumpunt tunicas."— Virg. Georg. 



134 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Bank ley in the nostrils makes rancor lie in the heart. 

73. Vilely washed, and as vilely ironed linen, which you would not 
believe to have been in the tub but for the reeking evidence of rank soap 
or ley, by which your nose is satisfied of the fact. 

74. Misbuttoning your waistcoat, (undiscovered till you have gone 
into company,) so that the bottom button seems sent to Coventry Jby the 

rest. 

75. Tying your neckcloth vilely, when you wish to be particularly 
seducing, (always the case!) and only making the matter worse the longer 
you fumble at it. 

76. On leaving the house, finding that you have lost one glove, and 
falsely hoping that you shall be less miserable by wearing the other single, 
than by going altogether bare-handed. 

77. The involuntary mortification of wearing a hair shirt, in conse- 
quence of having inconsiderately been cropped after shifting. 

78. In attempting to untie the strings of your drawers at going to bed 
very sleepy, dragging them into a cluster of hard knots, with your subse- 
quent frenzy of nipping and picking at them for an hour, till your nails are 
sore ; no knife. 

Ned Tes. 

" Ille simul manibus tendit divellere nodos — 
Clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit !" — Virg. 

79. Slipping your sleeve-button through a large button-hole; or 
wedging it in a small one. 

Sen Yes; or making ample room for your button, by 
breaking fairly through the hole at the weak end. 

80. In dressing to dine out — your last shoe-string breaking, the wrong 
coat brushed, hole found in your stocking after you are dressed, &c, <fec. ; 
all this, and much more, invariably coming upon you like hail, at the 
moment when you are most belated. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 135 

A brush with the bristles. The raiser of recollections of en-jaw-ments. 

81. After having broken the ice in your basin, to wash your hands — 
dangling them before you like a dancing bear, while you ferret about in 
vain for a towel. 

82. In cleaning your teeth — numerous holes full of bristles falling out 
at once, and clogging your jaws and throat, till you are choked ; then, in 
endeavoring to pick away with your fingers what you cannot rinse out, 
getting hold of only one bristle at a time : 



-" pilos 



Paulatim vello ; et demo unum, demo et item unum, 
elusus ratione mentis acervi !" — Hor. 

Ned Tes. 

" Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una ?" — Hor. 

83. In shaving — at the first onset, saluting your chin with a deep 
gash ; so that, through the remainder of the operation, your face and 
fingers are " dabbled in blood," which enrages you by flowing faster than 
you can wash it away ; " fluidum lavit inde cruorem — Dentibus infrendens 
gemitu /" When you have, at length, done with the razor — the new 
delays, (which you have to encounter, in an agony of haste,) by apply- 
ing one impotent styptic after another; and, to conclude, when, after 
endless attempts, you seem to have finally dammed the flood, and, in that 
persuasion, have finished your dress, and are just leaving your chamber — 
" eloquar, an sileam ?" — seeing it burst out afresh on your clean neckcloth ! 

84. Trying to lather your face with a brush like a wool-card, that 
excoriates your cheek, so as to make it a torture like self-immolation to 
get up a lather. Or, 

85. With one so soft, and weak, and imbecile, that it makes itself into 
two ropes, and straddles your chin. 

86. After having patiently and thoroughly stropped your razor, to 
(hop it on the marble table — edge foremost, of course. 

Tes. There is a song Mrs. Testy used to sing for me 



136 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Paring and re-paring till repairing is impossible. 

before she was so called, that exemplifies the proclivity of all 
bodies toward falling on the wrong side. I probably do not 
remember the exact words, but it was something like this : 

" I never had a dear gazelle, 
Particularly long and wide, 
But when it came to know me well, 
And always on the buttered side !" 

Ned Tes. How you do murder things, father ! There 
were two songs, one of which was a parody on the other : 

" I never had a dear gazelle, 

To glad me with its soft black eye, 
But when it came to know me well, 
And love me — it was sure to die." 

The parody is like unto it : 

" I never had a piece of bread, 
Particularly long and wide, 
But fell upon the sanded floor, 

And always on the buttered side !" 

Tes. No matter, sir. Both are appropriate, and mine 
combined the beauties of both — the beauties of both, sir ! 

87. After a long, patient, skillful, cautious, paring at a painful corn — 
when you have got it down to the lowest state of attenuation, to tiy one 
foolish slice too much, and start the blood, which stops not during the 
whole day, but alternately soaks and hardens on your stocking, till it 
forms a plaster, that sticks like grim death when you want to unboot at 
night. 

88. A fob so much too small for your watch, that, in impatiently 
tugging out the latter, you either turn the lining inside outwards, or bring 
away the chain by itself. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 137 

Pantaloons. A fit — not like a glove, but like a convulsion. 

89. Iu dressing for dinner — your last clean shirt, when you have put 
it on, proving so dangerously damp, that, to save your life, (and what 
weaker motive would bring you to do it ?) you throw it off, and put on the 
cast garment, in cold blood. 

Ned Tes. It is easy to say " What must be mussed," and 
perhaps your shirt-bosoms come in that category. 

90. Loudly bursting three or four buttons of your tight waistcoat, the 
fastenings of your braces, or the strings of your pantaloons behind, in 
fetching a deep sigh ! — dead silence in the company at the moment of the 
melancholy explosion. 

91. The two side-screws of your dressing-glass losing their power, 
(which happens in about a week after it has come home,) so that, with all 
your twisting and twirling, you can never persuade it to remain upright ; 
but, as you sit before it, it will keep swinging and flapping upon your 



92. Pushing up your shirt-sleeves for the purpose of washing your 
hands, but so ineffectually, that in the midst of the operation, they fall and 
bag down over your wet, soapy wrists. 

93. "When dressing in violent haste — your braces becoming suddenly 
so entangled, that, after fruitlessly turning and winding them for half an 
hour in every possible direction, till you are raving mad, you are, at last, 
obliged to fasten them as you can, with the buckles inside outwards — 
straps twisted into hard knots, and girding and cutting your back and 
shoulders like spliced cords, &c. 



Ned Tes. 



-" centum vinctus ahenis 



Post tergum nodis, fremit horridus ore cruento !" — Virg. 

94. Putting on a waistcoat which you find (too late) has lost its strings 
behind, so that it would take in all your family ; and consequently, when 
you button in your coat, the bottom of the waistcoat struts out like a tent. 



138 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A crumb — not of comfort. The penalty of loaf-ing in bed. 

95. Using a nail-brusb that would serve for a wool-card — its bristles 
being in knots an incb apart, so tbat only two or tbree prickles at a time 
find tbeir way under your nails, wbicb they rake to the quick, without 
disturbing a particle of the contents. 

96. Entering your watch at the wrong opening, when it instantly 
dives to your knee or your boot, where, for want of a lucky opportunity to 
extricate it, you continue to wear it. 

Sen. A mere trifle, Mr. Testy ; — hear me : 

91. Eating a biscuit so unguardedly, that the crumbs, or rather crust- 
ula, keep showering into your bosom ; while, from the cause you have just 
mentioned, you are under the necessity of cherishing them next your skin, 
for the rest of the day — and a poor day of it you have I Apropos of 
which, likewise — 

98. After having breakfasted in bed, to which you are confined — 
rolling, through the rest of the day and night, in crumbs, which are pres- 
ently baked by your body into innumerable needles of crust. 

99. The feelings of your teeth and gums, when you have insulted 
them by an over-proportion of vitriol in a tooth-powder. 

100. In lathering the face, before shaving, very early in the morning, 
while still half asleep — gaping so suddenly as to slap the full brush into 
your mouth ! — So much for the benefits of early rising 1. 

Ned Tes. 
" The man that's fond, precociously, of stirring, must be a spoon !" — Hood. 

101. The sudden necessity of going to a shoemaker's shop, on the des- 
perate enterprise of trying to suit yourself, extempore, with a pair of 
boots ; then, after dragging on and off his whole stock in trade, without 
once approaching to the mark, being fated to shuffle, or hobble away, at 
last, in a pair which you seem to have stolen. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



139 



A coat changed from a beauty to a b-u-t — for ridicule. 



102. After rising, in a bitter frost, and going up to the washing-stand 
— water frozen to the centre ; to have to stand, in an ague, first till you 
have raised a torpid servant, then while the pump is thawed, (fee. 




EXPLORING EXPEDITION TO THE FROZEN REGIONS Kane's Report. | 

Ned Tes. (Sufferer loq.) " Ewer like an iceberg ! At least 
you're not at all like a flow, 

103. Seeing the beauty of your coat, whilst yet in its prime, daily 
yielding to those confounded spots which come, you know not how nor 
when, an d which no degree of care can prevent from multiplying without 
mercy, till it is disfigured beyond all hope of recovery. 

" non ego paucis 



Offendar tnaculis ;" 

— but to see them spread by dozens in a day — there is no 
enduring it ! — look here, for instance — and here — and here — 
Sen. Nay, Mr. Testy, this misery may be removed by 
sending your coat to the scourer. 



* 



140 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A leak — more tearful even than an onion ! 

Tes. I must, I must ; — [then, rubbing it here and there 
with his sleeve'] — " Out, damn'd spot ! — out, I say ! — one !— 
two ! — why then 'tis time to do 't !" High time, indeed : — ■ 
yes — I will send it to the scourer's. 

104. Dressing for a ball by an ill-cast looking-glass, (not knowing it to 
be so at the time,) and so mourning over your own unseasonable ugliness. 

105. Sleeping in an ill-roofed attic stoiy, while torrents of rain are 
falling all night — the leaky ceiling refreshing you as you He, with a shower 
bath, filtered through the tester of your bed : 

" Quam — juvat somnos, imbre juvante, sequi !" 

Then, on rising, quite braced, in the morning, finding your stockings, neck- 
cloth, (fee, afloat. 

106. Waking in the middle of the night, in a state of raging thirst; 
eagerly blundering in the dark to the washing-stand ; and there, after 
preparing, with a firm grasp, to raise a large full water-decanter to your 
mouth — finding it fly up in your hand, as light as emptiness can make it ! 

Sen. Yes ; or, on the contrary, 

107. Finding the broad-mouthed pitcher, which you lift to your lips on 
the same occasion, so full, that, besides amply satisfying your thirst, it, at 
the same time, keeps cooling your heated body, and purifying your linen, 
with the overplus ! 

108. The twofold torment inflicted by a flea — viz., first, the persecution 
to which he subjects you through the night ; secondly, the loss of your 
meditated revenge in the morning, by his hocuspocus escapes — his un- 
thought-of and incredible capers, leaps, and flings, from under your eager 
fingers, at the very instant when you seem in the act of— nay, to have 
actually annihilated him. 

" Mille fugit refugitque vias ; at vivid us" alter 
" Haeret hians ; jam, jamque tenet, similisque tenenti 
Increpuit — morsu elusus !" — Virg. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 141 

Night-attacks of mosquitoes, &c, that make one regret the old " Knights in armor." 

Sen. O, yes ! — I am quite at home in this misery ; — 
" intus et in cute novi." This little harlequin of the insect 
race seems, like his brother the biped, to consider his pur- 
suers as foes " quos fallere et effugere est triumphus." 

109. Getting out of bed in the morning, after having had far too much 
sleep. 

Tes. To which I beg leave to " move as an amendment," 
— or far too little. 

110. After tossing through a restless night, in sickness, sinking at last 
into a doze, from which you instantly start broad awake, with the joy of 
thinking that you are falling asleep. 

111. At a strange house — jumping into a bed which you expect, and 
have desired, may be very hard ; and instantly finding yourself buried in 
a valley of pap, between two mountains of feathers ; the night a dog 
night 

112. Scylla, or Charybdis — sleeping in damp sheets, or between the 
blankets. 

113. The hypochondriacal impression, under which you fancy, as you 
lie in bed, that your fingers are each as large as a woolsack — legs of the 
size of church pillars — pillow bigger than the bed of "Ware, &c, &c. ; and 
all this affair seeming to grow worse and worse every moment ! 

Tes. A plaguy instance of Virgil's " Majorque videri !" I 
must own. 

114. To be startled from your slumbers, all night long, by your win 
dows, as they bang and thump, by fits, in the wind ; the floors and wains- 
cot of your chamber, too, occasionally stretching and cracking like a ship, 
(fee, etc. ; till, at last, if you have any nerves, you go mad. 

115. The shrill, tiny buzz, or whizz, of mosquitoes about your eyes, 
nose, and ears, through a sultry night. 



142 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Cold weather. Nurses. (Both suggestive of Lap-land.) 

116. Finding that you have far, very far — very far indeed — from 
enough bed-clothes, as you get into bed, in a brandy-freezing night; 
housemaids all asleep hours ago. 

117. Being driven from one corner of the bed to another by the shaip 
points of feathers, which stand up to receive you, on whichever side you 
turn. 

Ned Tes. 

" Omne tulit punctum F — Hor. 
Sen. 

" Restless he toss'd and tumbled, to and fro, 
And roll'd, and wriggled farther off, for woe !" — 

Dryd. Wife of Bath. 

118. "Waking with the pain of finding that you are doing your best to 
bite your own tongue off. 

119. The sheet untucked, or too short, so as to bring the legs into 
close intimacy with the blanket. 

120. While you are confined to your bed by sickness — the humors of 
a hired nurse ; who, among other attractions, likes " a drop of comfort" — 
leaves your door wide open — stamps about the chamber like a horse in a 
boat — slops you, as you lie, with scalding possets — attacks the fire, instead 
of courting it — falls asleep the moment before you want her, and then 
snores you down when you call to her — wakes you at the wrong hour to 
take your physic, and then gives you a dose of aquafortis for a composing 
draught ! <fcc &c, &c, 

121. The flame (but not the smell) of your candle going out, as you 
lie sick and sleepless ; leaving you, at once, 

" Pertaesum thalami, tasdaeque." — Virg. 

122. Suddenly recollecting, as you lie at a very late hour of a Lapland 
night, that you have neglected to see, as usual, that the fires are all safe 
below ; then, after an agonizing interval of hesitation, crawling out, like a 
culprit, and quivering down stairs. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 143 

After all, the worst thing about a bed Is — getting up. 

Tes. This happened to me last night. 0, it was a snug 
job, to be sure ! — as to myself, I had no scruple in determining 
that it would have been a world pleasanter, in such a night as 
that, to be burnt, than frozen, to death; but as Madam, there, 
seemed to think she had a sort of joint interest in the ques- 
tion, and was not altogether satisfied with my way of deciding 
it ; why, I e'en gave myself up to my fate. 

Sen. These dressing-room and bedchamber miseries make 
terrible inroads on one's domestic peace and quietness. 
What would you say, Testy, to a valet — a private servant 1 

Tes. " I shall have no further occasion for your services," 
is what I should probably say to him, (translated into polite 
language,) at the end of the first day-and-a-half, or shorter 
time ; whenever my patience was exhausted. A " gentleman's 
gentleman," indeed ! I'd as soon think of hiring a private 
drummer to contribute to my peace and quietness ! 

Ned Tes. Or a private toot-er, to play on the fife for you, 
and so add to the harmony of your domestic arrangements. 

Sen. To be sure ; we have said almost too much about the 
servant nuisance already, to allow the idea that an addition 
to their number could be an alleviation to any misery in the 
world. 

Tes. Besides, the nearer they are the more intolerable. 
As for a body-servant, no one bodily ailment could be com- 
pared with it. 

Ned Tes. Or, as an Englishman might say, it takes two 
''ills to make a valet. 

Sen. Well, what shall we attack next time ? 

Tes. We shall come to some " slough of despond," you 
may be sure — some ever-open trap-door, to fall through to 
the realms below. 

Ned Tes. To pitch into Tar-tar-us. 



144 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



The stamp of ill-breeding. 



Tes. Some patch of blackness is always to be had without 
searching for it ; and, what's more, lots of people to defend it 
as a beauty-spot. 

Ned Tes. We need not scour the earth to find its stains. 

Tes. No, indeed. We may leave it to chance, and still 
be at no loss to continue 




^ 



THE MARTYR LEG-END. 






THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 145 

Miseries of the body. (Every one nose— the blows it is subject to.) 



CHAPTER IX. 



Miseries of the body. (Every one nose — the blows it is subject to.) — Ad udfortudate 
bad who cad dot prodoudce eb or ed. — If you've studied your nerves, you've 
taught yourself self-torture. — Amateur doctors — of a mature age too. — The game 
of draughts-. Checkers — of perspiration. — Better let the ladies alone — or you"ll 
surely lose! — Men's best aims are found to be misses, — women's to be Mrs. — Are 
man-tillas machines for the cultivation of the race ? Harrowing thought !— Hap- 
piness destroyed by an evil spell. — Modern sociability. Oh Pride, thou hell-pest 
to make mankind wretched. — A carriage is like a lottery rjrize : never drawn- when 
one wants it. — A dis-tressed damsel. The meshes ladies weave are sometimes 
labor lost. — Parties of pleasure well named. The pleasure isn't in the meeting. — 
Compassionable ugliness. (The consequences of the small pox are to oe pitted.) — 
Motes are not defensible in eye-warfare. Beams can overcome them. 

1. A villainous cold in the head — blowing your nose lustily and 
frequently, till you are a "walking nuisance to all around you, but without 
any fruits, except a sharp twinging sensation in the nostrils, as the pas- 
sages which you have forced open, close up again with a shrill, thin, 
whining whistle ; not to mention the necessity of disgusting yourself and 
friends by pronouncing M like B, and N like D, till you are welL 

Sen. Bad enough ; but I have a worse, just now coming 
upon me : 

2. Being on the bri — on the bri — on the bri — on the br — {sneezes) — 
ink of a sneeze for a quarter of an hour together ; and yet, with all your 
gasping and sobbing, never able to compass it. 

3. After over fatigue or watching — those self-invited starts, jerks, or 
twitches, that fly about the limbs and body, and come on with an inde- 
scribable kind of tingling, teazing, gnawing restlessness ; more especially 
towards bed-time. 

7 



146 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Ad udfortudate bad who cad dot prodoudce eb or ed. 

4. Bending back the finger-nail, or even thinking of it. 

5. The sensation, from the hip downwards, when your foot is fast 
asleep, and before the sharp-shooting, which you have next to expect, has 
yet come on. 

6. Dreaming that you have a locked jaw, and seeming to wrench open 
your own head, in your convulsive efforts to speak or gape. 

7. A dozen or two of hiccoughs in the same breath. 

8. In your sick chamber — receiving a large parcel, which you expect 
to contain interesting books, or dainties sent for your comfort by some kind 
friend ; and, on eagerly opening it, finding only a myriad of fresh phials, 
and packets of medicines ; and this, too, when you thought you had done 
with the doctor. 

9. Pravo vivere naso ; i. e., a deep notch cut by an east wind under 
each nostril, and which you tear open afresh, every time you blow your 
nose. 

Sen. Also — (and this is a pleasure I have soon to expect) — 

10. The state of your mouth at the winding up of a tremendous cold — 
your lips being metamorphosed into two boiling barrels, totally disqualified 
for the functions of eating, speaking, laughing, gaping, whistling, and — 



Sen. In short, what gives all these rheumic distresses, 
besides a hundred more — 

11. A five-days' north-east wind. 

Ned Tes. Until all with one voice (who have any voice) 

cry: 

Cease, rude Boreas, blustridg railer, 

List, ye laddsbed, all to be ; 
Sailors, hear a brother sailor 

Sidg the dadgers of the c-(old). 

Ode's dose is a bere batter of forb, by that tibe. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 147 

If you've studied your nerves, you've taught yourself self-torture. 

12. To have your blood run cold, as the saying is, for that peculiar 
sensation of shivering chill that we all experience ; some for one sound, and 
some for another. One man I know will trot away lustily at hearing 
any one crack his finger-joints. Another would as soon die by the rack as 
crunch a piece of loaf-sugar in his mouth. As for me, a child writing on a 
slate is torture ; and to see, or ever to think 01, a spade driven into wet 
gravel sets the chills going between my shoulders, whence I can watch 
them travel downward over the top of my knees, leaving a track of irri- 
tated pores that children call " goose-flesh," standing up like the bristles on 
the back of an angry hog. 

13. Suddenly and violently scratching your ear, without recollecting 
to respect the feelings of an excruciating pimple, with which it is infested. 

Sen. Yes, the " vellit aurem," without the " admonuit," is 
a sad mistake, indeed ! 

1 4. Battering your own knuckles, or jarring the touchy part of your 
elbow against the edge of the table, as if with a hearty good will. 

15. After having, with great labor, succeeded in dragging on a new 
and very tight boot — receiving strong and incessant hints from a hornet at 
the bottom, that he does not like his confinement ; no boot-jack at hand to 
second your anxiety to relieve him, and the poor prisoner still jerking 
away ! 



16. On standing up, and stretching yourself, after sitting long over 
books or papers — the sudden rush of blood to the head, and consequent 
giddiness and staggering, with which you are punished for your sober 
excess. 

17. The ends of your finger-nails becoming rough and ragged, so as to 
catch and pull away the wool or threads of worsted, cotton, &c. 

18. After long reclining, with every limb disposed in some peculiarly 
luxurious manner — to be suddenly routed from your lounge ! Then, en- 
deavoring in vain to re-establish yourself in your former posture, of which 
you have forgotten the particulars, though you recollect the enjoyment, 



148 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Amateur doctors — of a mature age too. 

every new attempt leaving a certain void in your comfort, which nothing 
can supply : 

— ■■- — "in ev'ry varied posture, 



How widow'd ev'ry thought of every joy !" — Young. 

19. Trying in vain to tamper with an approaching fit of the cramp, by 
stretching out your limbs and lying as still as a mouse. 

20. In sickness — the tender persecution you undergo from your female 
friends, while, after a restless night, you are beginning, towards the evening 
of the following day, to drop into a delicious doze in your chair ; but 
which they will, on no account, suffer you to enjoy, settling it with each 
other that you are to be carefully shaken, and well tormented, every half- 
minute : one crying, " Don't go to sleep !" another, " You had better go to 
bed !" a third, " You'll certainly take cold !" a fourth, " You'll spoil your 
rest at night !" &c, &c. 



Ned Tes. 



-" alterius sic 



Altera poscit opem, et conjurat amice." — Hon. 

Tes. In the country, and under the direction of a pocket 
medicine-chest — 

21. Laboring in vain to disentangle your medicine scales, till, after 
fretting, twisting and twirling, for half the morning, to no purpose, you 
are, at last, obliged to weigh your dose {Tartar Emetic or James 1 Powders) 
as you can, with all the strings in a Gordian knot ; one scale topsyturvy, 
and the other turvytopsy, &c. 

Sen. Yes ; and this when 

" If thou tak'st more or less, be it but so much 
As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance, 
Or the division of the twentieth part 
Of one poor scruple — nay, if the scale turn 
But in the estimation of a hair, 
Thou diest!" — Merch. of Ven. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 149 

The game of draughts. Checkers — of perspiration. 

22. The interval between the dentist's confession that your tooth will 
be very difficult to draw, and the commencement of the attempt. 

23. Groping and stirring with a needle after a thorn in your finger, in 
hopes of wheedling out the peeping black atom ; which, however, proves 
too cunning at last for you, and your needle to help you, 

24. In a fireside circle — sitting with your head close to a gaping 
cranny, which keeps up a steady whisper full in your ear the whole even- 
ing long ; a whisper, however, from which you, at least, learn something — 
the nature of the ear-ache ! 

25. Rashly confessing that you have a slight cold, in the hearing of 
cei'tain elderly ladies of the faculty, who instantly form themselves into a 
consultation upon your case, and assail you with a volley of nostrums, all 
of which, if you would have a moment's peace, you must solemnly prom- 
ise to take off before night — though well satisfied that they would 
retaliate, by talcing you off before morning. 

26. When in the gout — receiving the ruinous salutation of a muscular 
friend, (a sea captain,) who, seizing your hand in the first transports of a 
sudden meeting, affectionately crumbles your chalky knuckles with the 
gripe of a grappling iron ; and then, further confirms his regard for you by 
greeting your tenderest toe with the stamp of a charger. 



Ned Tes. 



-" recepto 



Dulce mihi furere est amico !" — Hoe. 
27. The buzz of a struggling insect who has limed himself in your ear. 

Sen. A disagreeable intrusion, without dispute ; but I 
should think that the insect you formerly mentioned, which 
domiciliated itself in your eye, must have enraged you still 
more. 

Ned Tes. Yes : 

" Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, 
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta." — Hon. 



150 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Better let the ladies alone — or you'll surely lose 1 

Tes. Well, well ; you and Horace may settle that diffi- 
culty between you, for I cannot ; though it is not for want of 
pretty good experience in both ; for I seldom pass a day 
without an opportunity of comparing notes between the two ; 
one would think I was all over eyes and ears, like Virgil's 
Fame. But, come, have you any more ready-misery in 
pocket? For my part, I find that, for the present, my 
memory is out. 

Sen. I warrant you that Mrs. Testy, if she were here, 
could read us off a pretty list of feminine miseries ; one that 
would put many of ours to shame. 

Tes. Pshaw ! What do women know of the woes of 
men, except their name ? 

Ned Tes. {aside.) He does not mean a pun on the name 
of wo-men. 

Sen. In fact, she told me the other day that she was going 
to put down something of the sort. 

Tes. Then I'll bet you half-a-crown she has not done it ! 

Sen. Done! 

Tes. Ned, go and find your mother. 

[Enter Mrs. Testy. 

Mrs. Tes. There, sir. I have put down the miseries, and 

I'm particularly glad of it, because you are so nicely put 

down at the same time, and richly deserve it for your slur on 

the sex! 

Sen. However, I bet on a certainty, which is against all 
the laws of sporting, so we will consider it a drawn bet, if 
you please, and proceed to the reading. 
Ned Tes. 

" Let old Timotheus yield the prize, 
Or both divide the crown." 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 151 

Men's best aims are found to be misses, — women's to be Mrs. 

Tes. Well, well, take it, then ; and I give you joy of your 
sorrow : you may now sing, with old Burton, 

" Naught so sweet as melancholy !" 

And so now, Mrs. Testy, for your miseries, if you please ; 
and let us hear 

" furens quid foemina possit." 



Mrs. Tes. Yes, I can 

" answer thee in sighs 
With all thy woes, and count out tear for tear." 

You must take them as they come, gentlemen ; for I had not 
time to throw them into any order. 

28. After having invited a friend (who has things very nicely at home) 
to come and try some of your waffles, or your tea-biscuit, or something of 
that sort ; to have them come on the tea-table greatly inferior to the worst 
former experience. 

29. Having invited company socially for the evening, to have the re- 
freshments arrive with some paltry excuses, just as the last guest is leaving 
the door. 

30. To discover, at a dinner-party, that your terrapin soup twangs 
more decidedly of turpentine soap than can be accounted for in any other 
way than that yesterday was washing-day. 

31. At your first meal, on the first day of your housekeeping, to be 
startled by a fearful crash of glass and china, that admonishes you of the 
mutability of human affairs in general, and the evanescent nature of your 
elegant set of china in particular. 

Ned Tes. While you breakfast, the plates break faster ; 
or a din coming up the kitchen stairs that suggests a dinner 
tumbling down them. 



152 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE 

Are man-tillas machines for the cultivation of the race ? Harrowing thought ! 

32. To have a handsome lamp dropped on a handsome carpet, when 
it is hard to say which destruction is most complete. 

33. To sit for two hours, entirely dressed, waiting for a carriage, in 
which you were to call for a friend. 

34. Taking the opportunity to call on a tedious acquaintance, when 
you are sure, from having not long before passed her in the street, that 
you will have the felicity of leaving a card ; to find that she has just 
returned, and is so happy not to have missed you ! 

Ned Tes. Your Mc Inations, as Yellowplush would say, 
brought to naught. 

35. Being comfortably settled for a quiet domestic evening, during 
which one of the family is to read the last number of Dickens' new novel, 
to be invaded by a prosy bore, who is full of self-gratulation at having 
found you at home — having come on a rainy evening on purpose, &c. ; to 
all which you feel obliged to respond cordially, though hating yourself for 
your duplicity,, 

36. On sitting down to sing — to find the piano so very much out of 
tune that you are continually thinking you are playing false, which opinion 
your audience shares with you, mthout finding out that they are mis- 
taken. 

Si. While engaged in an animated conversation, to arrive suddenly at 
the unavoidable conclusion that your hair is coming down, and that it will 
arrange itself down your back a la tragedy queen on the slightest move- 
ment. 

38. To be obliged to make an ignominious retreat from a promenade, 
to repair damages sustained by your lace dress from some intruding foot. 

39. While congratulating yourself on the possession of a new-fashioned 
mantilla, just received from Paris, to have it borrowed by some tasteless 
creature for a pattern ; to be reproduced,, you are sure, in some hideous 
color and fabric. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 153 

Happiness destroyed by an evil spell. 

40. To sleep through a serenade, and to hear it discussed by others 
with the reflection that you had a bouquet in the parlor, with which you 
would have been delighted to have rewarded the performers. 

41. To receive a letter from a friend in the country, full of commissions 
of so precise and exacting a nature, that you know it will take you all 
over the city, and several days, to give even moderate dissatisfaction. 

Ned Tes. Your friend is, of course, anxious to have her 
things in the most severely chased style. 

42. To be reminded that it is the first of April, by discovering a label 
with an inscription, pinned to your shawl behind, or that you are carrying 
one end of a string, the other end of which is supported by a small but 
active kite. 

43. Having promised to assist a friend by playing at a musical soiree, 
to have a professional musician perform your only prepared piece before 
your turn comes — or after. 

44. Receiving a bouquet, anonymously, as you suppose ; and, after 
displaying it to the family, to discover a note appended, which proves it 
to belong to your next-door neighbor. 

45. At the opera or a new spectacle — to have your opera-glass bor- 
rowed of you by people who have no claim for such accommodation— 
always kept until you ask for it, and always borrowed again as soon as 
you happen to let it down or change hands. 

46. To have some kindly-intentioned friend, who has offered to assist 
you in writing invitations for a large party, date all hers " Teusday" or 
u Wensday," you not discovering this till you see one afterwards in a card- 
basket. 

47. Going to a party on a different day from the one for which you 
were invited — especially a fancy ball. 

48. On breaking up housekeeping, to send some things to a friend to 

7* 



154 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Modern sociability. Oh, Pride, thou hell-pest to make mankind wretched. 

keep for you, and to receive in return a note, thanking you for your kind 
and useful presents ! 

49. When you are giving a small party, from "which you have been 
obliged to leave out some of your acquaintances — to have some of the 
excluded call during the evening. 

50. To be invited to spend a social evening ; and, on going, timed and 
dressed accordingly, to arrive an hour before any one was expected, and 
before any one but yourself appears. Your dress is, of course, conspicu- 
ously inappropriate during the whole evening. 

51. The converse of the above. 

52. On getting out of an omnibus at the end of a shopping expedition 
to find that you have but four cents left. N". B. The pleasure of explain- 
ing this to the deaf driver in the presence of eleven strange gentlemen. 

53. After pronouncing judgment against some article of vertu in pos- 
session of a friend, to find that it was intended for a present to yourself. 

Ned Tes. That will do for the 'present. 

54. After having invited a large party to dinner — within a few hours 
of their expected arrival, some of the most indispensable servants (cook in 
particular) seized with the influenza, smallpox, &c, when it is quite too 
late to look out for substitutes, or to put off the engagement. 

55. While playing on the piano-forte, being obsedee by the attentions 
of a courteous gentleman, (quite ignorant of music,) who turns over the 
leaf of your music-book a dozen bars too soon, and in his zeal to be 
soon enough, pulls down the book on the keys, and one of the candles 
into your lap. 

Ned Tes. It is worse to be the awkward gawk that does it. 
Experto crede. 

56. If you are a single woman, with a reasonable stock of delicacy 
and pride — being rallied by a facetious gentleman, in a company where 
you are not very much known, on the subject of a husband. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 155 

A carriage is like a lottery prize : never drawn when one wants it. 

57. If you are afflicted with the malady of blushing — to read in the 
complacent smile of a coxcomb who has accosted you, that he thinks you 
are interested in his attentions. 

Ned Tes. The necessity of talking to him at all must be 
painful, but Ainsworth says, " Anser a goose." 

58. A carnage which is of little or no use to you, because your coach- 
man generally chooses either to be sick himself, or that his horses should 
be lame or his carriage at the blacksmith's ; yet you are afraid to part with 
him, as, unluckily, he is a careful driver, and extremely sober, and you a 
great coward. 

Ned Tes. He represents the carriage-wheels as being tired, 
when he desires repose for himself. By the by,, speaking of 
carriages, why needn't a good-natured dog's tail be a foot 
long] 

Sen. Couldn't tell, I'm sure. 

Ned Tes. It needn't be a-foot long, because it keeps 
a-waggin > . 

Tes. (sternly.) Mrs. Testy, proceed, if you please. 

59. A termagant cook, who suffers neither yourself nor your servants 
to have a moment's peace — yet, as she is an excellent cook, and your hus- 
band a great epicure, you are obliged to smother your feelings, and seem 
both blind and deaf to all her tantrums. 

60. Working, half asleep, at a beautiful piece of fine netting, in the 
evening — and on returning to it in the morning, discovering that you have 
totally ruined it. 

61. Snapping your thread quite close to your work, so that you cannot 
join it without picking out the knot — that is, breaking two or three loops. 

62. Being disappointed by a hair-dresser on a ball-night, when you 
have left your hair totally uncurled, in full dependence upon him : in this 
emergency, being obliged to accept the offered services of a kind female 



156 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

A dis-tressed damsel. The meshes ladies weave are sometimes labor lost. 

friend, who makes you an absolute fright, burning off a curl or two with 
the tongs j but she being much older than yourself, and of acknowledged 
judgment, you dare not pull it all to pieces ; and if you should, you have 
neither time nor skill to put it to rights again. 




" AE CURL FKAE MARY'S BONNY LOCKS." — (Bums !) 

63. At a ball — being asked by two or three puppies " why yon don't 
dance ?" and asked no more questions, by these, or any other gentlemen, 
on the subject : on your return home, being pestered with examinations and 
cross- examinations, whether you danced — with whom you danced — why 
you did not dance, (fee, <fec. ; the friend with whom you went complaining 
all the time of being worried to death with solicitations to dance the whole 
evening. 

64. At a long table, after dinner, the eyes of the whole company 
drawn upon you by a loud observation that you are strikingly like Mrs. — 
or Miss , particularly when you smile. 

65. The only thimble which you ever could get to fit you exactly, 
rolling off the table unheeded ; then, crushed to death in a moment by the 
splay foot of a servant 

66. After having consumed three years on a piece of crochet work, 
which has been the wonder of the female world, leaving it, on the very 
day you have finished it, in the hackney coach in which you were exult- 
iugly carrying it to the friend whom you intended to surprise with it as a 
present ; afterwards repeatedly advertising — all in vain. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 157 

Part-ies of pleasure well named. The pleasure isn't in the meeting. 

67. Receiving the first hint that your thimble has a hole worn through 
it, from the needle, as it runs, head and shoulders, under the nail. 

68. On retiring, after dinner, without a female companion — being re- 
quested by one of the party to permit a stupid, gawky boy of about 14 to 
accompany you ; in this distress, you can neither have recourse to books, 
of which he knows nothing, nor to music, which he declares himself to 
hate ; so that, after haviDg extorted from him how many brothers and 
sisters he has, what school he goes to, and what are the games now in 
season, you are condemned to total silence, which is interrupted only by 
the squeaks of your favorite puppy or kitten, as he amuses himself by 
pinching and plaguing it during the remainder of the tete-a-tete. 

69. At a ball — when you have set your heart on dancing with a par- 
ticular favorite — at the moment when you delightedly see him advancing 
towards you, being briskly accosted by a conceited simpleton at your 
elbow, whom you cannot endure, but who obtains (because you know not 
in what manner to refuse) " the honor of your hand" for the evening. 

TO. When you are giving a party, and have just begun to have hopes 
that it is to be a " successful go," from the spirit of the dancing and the 
general hum that fills the pauses of the music — to have a few pounds of 
ceiling shaken down ; recalling the old fashions of powdered heads and 
sanded floors. 

Ned Tes. How mortar-fied you must all be! "Similia 
similibus curantur ;" but no plaster could heal the wound in 
your entertainment. 

Tes. For me, you might make one misery of the whole 
race of meetings that now go under the name of parties. The 
only thing tolerable I ever find about them is, the little 
whist table that sometimes collects in the dressing-room, with 
no connection with the noisy misery below, except the dis- 
turbing roar you can't entirely get rid of. 

Ned Tes. In other words, you prefer the private coat-ery 
to the public bawl. 






158 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Compassionable ugliness. (The consequences of the small pox are to be pitted.) 

Mrs. Tes. Well, I've come to the end of my list, though 
I haven't complained of the fate of us elderly ladies, who 
martyr-ize ourselves to matronize our daughters. 

Ned Tes. Wall-flowers should not be allowed to go with- 
out a tack. 

Tes. However, my dear, you have proved yourself toler- 
ably unhappy for a lady. 

Sen. {bowing.) He means, madam, for a lady who has 
been all her life the admiration of one sex and the envy of 
the other. If you can show such a list, what should we have 
to expect from some ! 

" Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis time," 

that a little difference in the proportions of a lady's face 
makes an immense difference in her fate ; whereas it ought 
to make none except as an exponent of character. 

Ned Tes. A woman may be subject to having many a 
slight cast in her teeth, merely from having a slight cast in 
her eyes. 

Sen. A fortune-teller nowadays should look not at the 
lines of the hand, but at the lines of the face. 

Ned Tes. And the lining of the pockets. 

Mrs. Tes. I thank you, Mr. Sensitive, for my sex, since 
we are in a position where we must be grateful for justice ; 
and now, having done my best, you will honorably dismiss 
me from the service, I suppose. 

Tes. With pleasure. 

Sen. With pain. 

Ned Tes. Scandal says that to be dis-missed is the first 
object of women's lives. 

Sen. And scandal lies. Such sayings as that, I think, 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 159 

Motes are not defensible in eye-warfare. Beams can overcome them. 

must be originated by disappointed suitors. Let man pull the 
beam from his own eye before he looks for motes in the eyes 
of the other sex. 

Ned Tes. Men can make in this case, with a better grace 
than usual, the invariable rejoinder (expressed or understood) 
to that quotation. 

Sen. What answer is that, Ned 1 

Ned Tes. "The motes are in our eyes, and the learns are 
in the eyes of our opponents." 



1G0 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Miseries miscellaneous. "Who shall prescribe when doctors disagree with you? 



CHAPTEE X. 

Miseries miscellaneous. Who shall prescribe when doctors disagree with you ? — 
" Any thing by way of change." More the cry now than ever. — An income to be 
drawn and a nincom to draw it. — Caricature portraits. (A dag gcr-o" 1 -type natu- 
rally suggests a libel.) — Take Time by his forelock, and he'll retaliate on yours. — 
Tears decline, vanity does not — except that it declines to own up. — If youVe 
tarred your hair, retard the comb. A de-voted candidate. — Making a spectacle 
of oneself by borrowing those of a friend. — The bookmakers; a great class. 
" Write away" is an appropriate Americanism. — A clerk's not the man to cut a 
figure. He knows them all too well. — Mr. Testy takes the rains in his own hands. — 
A 2>-serving youth, with a 2>-sire to please. — The race of beggars. (A hand-i'-cap 
race.) — Eesignation is a virtue — that office-holders are loth to practice. — The Tea- 
room. More-tea-flcation of the flesh agrees with aldermanic corporations. — The 
pavior who cobbles half the street and blocks the whole. — We're in the reforming 
vein. Our efforts are probably in vain too. — Ice calls for slippers as naturally as 
water does for pumps. — Sick transit : from the odor of flowery buds to that of 
Bowery floods. — PaZA-ological researches. Has our work any mission but dis- 
mission ? Plans. An outline of the forces— a mere shell, having no colonel. — All 
appears to be dished : or, what's equivalent, be-trayed. — The greatest misery of 
all for the reader — the end. 

Sen. I'll tell you what is a curious sort of a misery, but 
nevertheless a genuine one, as mankind is constituted. 

1. A doctor who persists in telling you that there is nothing the mat- 
ter with you, instead of giving you medicine suited to the importance you 
think attaches to your ailments. 

Ned Tes. Or one who always reiterates the same word, 
which would be equally appropriate if the complaint were red 
hair! 

Sen. What word is that, Ned 1 

Ned Tes. Diet. 

2. To see a slight acquaintance approaching at a distance, as you walk 
along an empty sidewalk, whom you know you must bow to when you 
meet, and not before. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 161 

" Any thing by way of change." More the cry now than ever. 

3. To have a new, fashionable acquaintance look full round at you, to 
see who it was whistling so elaborately behind him ! 

Sen. The awkwardness and uncertainty whether to bite 
off your tune in the middle of a bar, or go on with a painful 
effort at indifference, is agonizing. 

Ned Tes. The first, certainly. Don't throw the cloak of 
hypocrisy over the breaches of good manners. 

4. Laboring in vain to do up a parcel with scanty, weak, bursting 
paper, and thin, short, rotten string. 

5. Receiving a quantity of thin sixpences in change at a shop, and 
striving to pick up the separate pieces against the rim, or ridge of the 
counter, but with such cruelly short nails, and in such violent haste, that 
you barely raise the edge of the coin, so as to cut and gall the quick of 
your fingers, from which the piece drops fiat every time. 

6. After the first or prelusive squall of a fractious brat, which you 
had taken in your arms to please its mother — the horrible pause during 
which you perceive that it is collecting breath to burst out with a fresh 
and recruited scream, that is to thrill through your marrow ; yet you know 
that, strange to say, if you throttle it, the law will throttle you ! 

7. The necessity of sending a verbal message of the utmost conse- 
quence, by an ass who, you plainly perceive, will forget (or rather has 
already forgotten) every word you have been saying. 

8. Your snuff-box shutting ill — or rather, not shutting at all ; so that 
you cany the snuff and the box, separately, in your pocket. 

9. The dead silence of your capricious watch, when you are anxiously 
listening for its tick. 

10. The moment of recollecting that you have sent a letter, unsealed, 
containing all your most profound and delicate secrets, by one who, you 
know, will pay himself for postage, by very freely participating in your 
confidence. 



162 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

An income to be drawn and a nincom to draw it. 

11. Going about for days together with a gaping cut in your right 
hand, (your bad sticking-plaster immediately coming off as often as you 
apply it,) till it is choked with dust, as well as widened and inflamed, by 
rubbing against eveiy thing. Also — 

12. The process of buttoning and tying your clothes (ditto of washing 
your hands) when the fingers are in so maimed a condition, that fastening 
one button in a quarter of an hour is doing great things. 

13. Going cheerily to the bank for your dividends, on leaving town, 
and after waiting an hour before you can be served, suddenly discovering 
that you must wait considerably longer — having lost your memoranda of 
all the names and sums upon which you are to receive ! 

14. In going out to sea in a fishing-boat with a delightful party, con- 
tinuing desperately sick the whole time ; the rest of the company quite 
gay and well. 

15. On instituting a severe scrutiny into the state of your hair, from 
the sudden and alarming detection of a bald spot — finding yourself at 
least ten years nearer to a wig than you had at all apprehended. 



16. When you are half asleep — receiving and wading through a long, 
dull, obscure, illegible, ungrammatical, misspelt, ill-pointed, letter of busi- 
ness — requiring a copious answer by the bearer. 

17. In walking the streets — closely following, for above half an hour, 
a fellow with a heel as long as his foot, over which an inch of leather 
barely peeps behind ; so that the foot seems, at every step, in the act of 
slipping out of the shoe — till you, at length, desperately wish it would 
happen, that the worst may be over. 

Sen. I mention this misery to you, Mr. Testy, with hesitation, 
as we have been told that there are some "joys, which none 
but madmen know ;" so are there some " miseries," which 
none but the nervous know : and this, I easily conceive, may 
be one. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 163 

Caricature portraits. (A dag ger-o' -type naturally suggests a libel.) 

18. After bathing — the dull, rumbling, rushing sound which continues 
all day long in your ears, and which all your tweaking, nuzzling, and 
rummaging at them, serves only to increase. 

19. After having, with great difficulty, persuaded a friend to sit for 
his or her picture, and then feasting yourself with the thoughts of pos- 
sessing a fac simile, which the great fame of the artist encouraged you to 
expect — receiving, after long delays, what proves to be the face of — any 
one but your friend ! 

Sen. That's nothing compared to the being so caricatured 
yourself, so that your friend, instead of being agreeably sur- 
prised, as you purposed, is astounded ! 

Ned Tes. The first's " a mere drop in the bucket," as the 
boy said when he fished his tooth-brush out of the slop-pail. 

Sen. What say you to daguerreotypes 1 

Tes. One of the most valuable inventions of the age — for 
the checking of vanity. I like them. They don't flatter, but 
on the contrary they exaggerate. 

Sen. They are invaluable, even in the art's present imper- 
fect state ; but the time will come when you can snap up, and 
petrify, a friend's face, literally "in the twinkling of an eye." 
For a countenance that depends on an animated expression 
for its charm to a friend, daguerreotypes are wofully defi- 
cient. To my own face, they have a perfectly corpse-ifying 
effect. 

Ned Tes. En-^rave-ings on steel they should be classed 
with. 

Tes. How many millions there must be in the world 
already ! No house I go into but I come across a pile of 
little, rough, imitation-morocco, maroon-colored cases, with 
ugly black countenances inside, and I always pass them by, 
without the first sensation of interest in them. 



164 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Take Time by his forelock, and he*ll retaliate on yours. 

Ned Tes. They 

" Come like shadows, so depart." 

20. The season when you first begin to have " a realizing sense" of the 
approach of age, and before you get accustomed to the consciousness of 
having 




ONE FOREHEAD TOO MANY- 




ONE CHIN TOO MANY — 



and a good many teeth too few. 



Ned Tes. (aside.) I should think father must have been 
forty-fied, some years ago, against feelings of that sort. 

Sen. And these manifestations seem to come in such 
showers when they once begin. The more of a fast man you 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 165 



Tears decline, vanity does not— except that it declines to own up. 

have been while on the ascending grade, the faster, when you 
have once passed the summit, you tear down the vale of de- 
clining years and with ever-increasing reminders. 

Ned Tes. (aside.) You " tear down the veil" when you let 
out how much you are distressed by what all men ought to 
consider marks of honor. 

21. Breaking a phial of asafoetida in your pocket ; and then mangling, 
as well as poisoning, your fingers, in taking out the bits of broken glass. 

22. Hiding your eyes with your hand, for a whole evening together, 
in vain attempts to recover a tune, or a name ; said tune, &c, repeatedly 
flitting before you, but so rapidly as never to be fairly caught. 

23. Suddenly finding out that your watch has lost two or three hours, 
while you have been revelling in a fool's paradise of leisure, and uncon- 
sciously outstaying your appointments, and disordering all the arrange- 
ments of the day, with nothing to have prevented you from adhering to 
them with perfect ease. 

24. In handing a glass of wine, or some brittle article of great beauty 
and value, to another person — suddenly quitting your hold of it, under a 
false idea that he has taken his. — " Guess, ah, guess the rest!" 

25. In pumping — the dry, wheezing hiss, and dead, thumping drop of 
the handle, as you keep working it, with vain hopes of water. 

26. Showing the colleges, public buildings, and other remarkables of 
the city, for the 500th time, to a party who discover no signs of life 
during the whole perambulation 

27. Buying a pocket-handkerchief on an emergency so pressing, that 
you have no tune to get it hemmed ; so that, before the day is half over, it 
is all in strings. 

28. Eagerly breaking open a letter, which, from the superscription, 
you conclude to be from a dear and long-absent friend ; and then, finding it 
to contain nothing but a tradesman's long bill, which, moreover, you 



166 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

If you've tarred your hair, retard the comb. A de- voted candidate. 

thought had been long ago discharged ; but of which immediate payment 
is demanded in a veiy valiant letter, in closing the account : cash extremely 
low. 

29. Walking fast, and far, to overtake a woman, from whose shape 
and air, as viewed en derriere, you have decided that her face is angelic ; 
till, on eagerly turning round, as you pass her, you are petrified by a 
Gorgon ! 

Ned Tes. A dismal transition, indeed, from " O dea, 
certe !" — to 

" remove fera monstra, tueeque 

Saxificos vultus, qusecunque ea, tolle Medusae !" — Ovid. 

30. After having bought, and paid for, some expensive article, 
thinking you had lost such another — unexpectedly finding the latter ; then 
endeavoring, in vain, to persuade the iron shopkeeper to take back your 
purchase, and return the money. 

31. Struggling through the curse of tiying to disentangle your hair, 
when, by poking curiously about on board of ship, it has become matted 
with pitch or tar, far beyond all the powers of the comb. 

32. Suddenly finding, safe in your pocket, three or four letters of the 
most pressing consequence, intrusted to your care a week or a fortnight 
before, by a person hardly known to you, upon the faith of your promise 
to put them into the post within an hour. 

33. As a candidate — to be thrown out by a casting vote ; and this, 
when your party was so strong, that many of your friends kept away, on 
the certainty that you would muster far more than enough without them.* 



* When Piron was defeated as a candidate for the Royal Academy, 
he wrote his epitaph : 

Ci git Piron qui ne fut rien 
Pas meme Academicien ! 

Here lies Piron to whom, Fate never assigned his position : 
A cipher he went to tl e tomb — not even an Academician ! 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 1G7 

Making a spectacle of oneself by borrowing those of a friend. 

34. Inveterate huskiness coming on you at the moment of beginning 
to address a crowded audience, especially if they attribute your difficulty 
of speaking to a little too generous treat-ment previously. 

Ned Tes. They would naturally suppose you to be corned, 
to account for your being husky, 

35. After having long hunted in vain for a missing bank-note of $100, 
and just as you are in the act of accusing an honest servant, on very sus- 
picious appearances, of having made a perquisite of it — suddenly spying 
out the last rag of its remains in the mouth and paws of a puppy, who 
had slyly embezzled it, for his own private recreation. 

36. Paying the bills of blacksmiths, butchers, " et hoc genus omne," 
and receiving in change, notes, silver, and pence, in a condition but too 
strongly impressing upon your mind the truth of the adage, that " riches 
are but dirt !" 

37. Learning, among other interesting communications in a letter just 
received from a dear friend abroad, that about a dozen of your last 
pacquets, on both sides, have missed their way. 

Sen. The following I should address to the meagre-visaged, 
like myself, rather than to such a well-fed sufferer as you are, 
Mr. Testy : 

38. The necessity of borrowing the spectacles of a moon- faced friend. 
Ned Tes. Very bothering, indeed ! 

" Non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit." — Yirg. 

39. After bathing in the river — on returning to the bank for your 
clothes, finding that a passing thief has taken a sudden fancy to the cut of 
every article of your dress ! 

40. To find, after wilting a letter of directions to your lawyer, and 
another to the man against whom he is conducting an important suit, that 



168 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The bookmakers ; a great class. " Write away'''' is an appropriate Americanism. 

you have reversed the directions, and sent the plan of the campaign to 
the enemy ; and, what is more disagreeable, a private dispatch on the folly 
of litigation in general to your ally the lawyer, which you meant only for 
the eye of your opponent. 

41. To have, for a poor relation, an industrious, deserving fellow, who 
knows the art of making a dollar (into a dime) in shorter time than almost 
any other man in the world. One of that sort of men who seem so 
doomed to misfortune, that if they were to become hatters, you would 
expect the next generation to be born without heads ! Who would be sure 
to live for ever if they insured their lives, but die incontinently on buying 
an annuity ! 

Ned Tes. I know who you mean, father. Some one who 
is very fond of you, and requires continual Testy-money of 
your affection for him. 

Sen. My life was mercantile for years, you know, Testy, 
and I have witnessed and experienced a thousand things cal- 
culated to satisfy any one, foolish enough to grub over our 
notes to find how much cause he has to be miserable. Now, 
I have a little lot of these written down, which we may as 
well have here as any where else, though, perhaps, it should 
properly have made part of the literary miseries. No one 
has more to do with writing than a clerk, though he has but 
few claims to the name of an author. His figures are not of 
speech. His journal is never printed, though bound before it 
is written. What he writes is of no value except to the 
owner. How many authors I know, about whose writings 
you need make no exception ! 

Ned Tes. The clerk keeps his books, and the publisher 
keeps the authors': much against his will, too, for they do not 
pay for their board. 

Tes. Let's have them by all means. A good misery is 
never amiss. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 169 

A clerk's not the man to cut a figure. He knows them all too well. 

Ned Tes. {aside.) If he had said that a good Miss was 
never a misery, (except in sporting,) he would have come 
nearer my ideas. 

Sen. Well, here goes. 

42. In making application for a situation, which it is of vital and actual 
importance, or, in one word, of victual importance, to you to secure — to 
have your nervousness overpower your common sense entirely, so as to 
feel, at the most critical moment, that you are appeariug at the worst 
possible disadvantage. Then to have a " little" interest calculation to do, 
to show your quickness at figures. To erown all, to be asked for a speci- 
men of your off-hand penmanship, when your hand trembles like an aspen ! 

Ned Tes. Making the " specimen" look as if it had been 
written by an ass-penman, I suppose. 

43. Or, on the other hand, to doubt, as you go home, whether you 
have not been too plausible ; whether you have not committed that great- 
est of mistakes in a clerk — talking too much. 

44. If you are not above errand-running — to be sent long walks, 
repeatedly, with different messages, in the same direction, which a little 
considerateness and calculation in the sender would have enabled you to 
accomplish all at once. 

45. A general carelessness in laying out your work, or an unaccount- 
able fatality which makes eaeh job twice as laborious as it need be ; and 
then at night being compelled to walk two or three miles home, for lack 
of a sixpence to pay an omnibus fare ; your walk enlivened with cogitating 
as to what can have become of your porte-monnaie ! 

Sen. After having, with unwonted care and expense, got 
up your personal appearance to a pitch gratifying to your 
vanity, imagine your chagrin in the following dilemma: 

46. To be caught, in a storm, at the store, while your two umbrellas 
are at home, or vice versa. Or, worse than either, to take a long walk 

8 



170 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Mr. Testy takes the rains in his own hands. 

with a broken concern that cannot be made to stay up, except by holding 
one weary arm high above your head, while the dilapidated plague lets in 
a stream of rain-water round the handle, that runs down your hand and 
arm under the sleeve. 

Ned Tes. If I could not dam the stream, I should be 
tempted to d — n the umbrella, I think. 

Tes. I walked a mile the other day, with a new white hat 
on, under another description of umbrella. It was new, and 
the handle was good, and the cover was good, but they were 
not fast together ; and the top, when I opened it, slipped off 
the end over the ferule, and wagged its head about — like an 
idiot! I never was angrier in my life ! The points hung 
almost close together, and poked and dribbled about my 
head, and when I got home I found that the color had soaked 
out of the rascally cotton, and my hat looked as if it had been 
made of the skin of the Woolly Horse, after drowning him 
in an ocean of ink ! 

Ned Tes. Ink-creasing torments ! 

Tes. You never had any experience of the retail trade, 
Sensitive 1 

Sen. No, indeed. That is a very different thing. I would 
much rather carry bricks in a hod all day. I should have 
died a miserable death if it had been my fate to sell goods to 
some ladies I know. 

Ned Tes. If your lot had been retail, you would never 
have lived to re-tell the tale. 

47. To be interrupted in adding up a whole ledger column of figures 
when within four or five of the end ; and then, in your rage, forgetting 
what you carried from the previous column, so as to be compelled to add 
that over to begin with. 

48. To get down late the only morning in the week when your 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 171 

A 2>-serving youth, with a Z>-sire to please. 

employer gets down early, so as to leave him to suppose that if he always 
arrived at that hour he would be before you. 

Sen. From subsequent experience I can give you a few 
specimens of the business annoyances of employers as well as 
employees. 

49. To have an affected clerk — one who, for example, is ridiculously 
respectfuL and deferential, especially before strangers. 

50. To have to take the shiftless, dissipated son of a friend, and then 
struggle on with him, though he mortifies you in every way, knowing that 
to turn him off would be his ruin. 

Ned Tes. Looking forward to ruin the day you turn him 

away, even while rue-in^ the day you took him 

Sen. Besides offending the whole family. 

51. Receiving a call from a person whom you know,- and who knows 
you, but whose name your memory, with a strange obstinacy, refuses to 
recall. The longer you feign perfect recognition, (in hopes of his giving 
you some clue, or of its flashing upon you,) the more impossible it seems 
to ask him. At length, you let him depart, and turn to your ledger index, 
and read every name from A to Z ; or, if he mentions any important 
business matter that must be attended to, you are forced to make the 
mortifying declaration that you have not the slightest idea of whom you 
have been chatting with. 

52. To have some mistaken statement of yours con-ected in such a 
way that you know the hearer must think that the clerk is more honest 
than you wished him to be. 

Tes. That is one of those cases where any effort to clear 
yourself would only show a consciousness of being suspected, 
and exceedingly ticklish and puzzling cases they are to treat. 

53. To have your credit doubted when you are in the humor to think 
it a personal insult, even while you know what a fool you would think any 
other man who took it in the same way. 



172 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Tlie race of beggars. (A hand-i'-cap race.) 



54. To have to conduct your side of a violent quarrel on business 
matters in the presence of the whole posse comitatus of clerks, porters, <fcc. 
Or— 

55. After having been away on such an errand, to come to the store 
to pour it into the sympathetic ear of your partner — especially if he is a 
little deaf. 

Ned Tes. In that case he is only an add-er to your troubles. 

56. The whole race of beggars. 




O LORD HERE'S ANOTHER ! 



Sen. I'm not naturally an uncharitable man, but- 



Ned Tes. On the contrary, you would have liked to have 
set them all on horseback. 

Sen. Ha, ha ! That would better the race, as you would 
say. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 173 

Kesignation is a virtue — that office-holders are loth to practice. 

Tes. We have never yet carried out our intention of 
attacking the municipal abuses. 

Sen. Well, suppose we finish by responding to a few of 
the loudest calls for reformers. 

Ned Tes. It's a pity that class of people hadn't been bom 
with a caul. 

Sen. You mean the reformers, of course. The opposite 
class need no preservative against being drowned ! 

57. To look over the opposition papers the morning after paying your 
enormous city taxes, and see what an outrageous system of corruption your 
money has gone to sustain. 

Tes. I'll be hanged, Sensitive, if it is not enough to make 
a man forswear the world, and retire to Coney Island for 
ever, to attempt to keep an eye on the New York city 
government ! Executive — common council — police — street- 
sweepers — all, from the highest to the lowest — all together or 
all in turn — either for inefficiency or for rascality, or both — are 
a disgrace to the city, and deserve to be a byword for all time ! 

Sen. There you go, Testy. Off like a rocket, far away 
from us common people, and blazing away in mid air. 

Tes. No, I'm not. I'm mild and moderate. The worst I 
could say would be flattery, compared to their deserts ! 

Sen. Yes, you are, and you instinctively acknowledge it, 
for you raise your voice higher as you go farther and farther, 
as a man might who was going up in a balloon, and still 
keeping up a conversation with the people below. Now, the 
fact is, I have long ago decided that the only way to get 
along coolly and philosophically, without bursting blood- 
vessels, or doing other disgusting, disagreeable things of the 
same sort, was to change your politics as often as the city 
government changed, and take only those papers that sup- 



174 THE MISERIES OF HUM AX LIFE. 

The Tea-room. More-Tea-fication of the flesh agrees with aldermanic corporations. 

ported it through thick and thin. To be sure, I was rather 
puzzled this year, on account of the executive being one side, 
and the legislative the other ; but I soon decided to subscribe 
for the papers that support the latter, as that needs it most, 
and the knowledge of the truth as to their sins would make 
me angriest. It circumscribed my newspaper reading terribly, 
and reduced me to one or two pretty hard specimens of the 
tribe ; but, on the other hand, it has kept my state of mind 
benign and balmy compared to yours. 

Tes. That sort of talk is all nonsense ! You know very- 
well, Sensitive, that the city government in New York is a 
nuisance. 

Ned Tes. A nuisance of long standing, blue-moulded for 
want of a-bating, as the pugnacious Irishman professed him- 
self to be when he couldn't get any body to fight him. 

Tes. The police force is miserably inefficient. Rowdies 
abound, so that honest men can't sleep. Their hand is against 
every man, and no man's hand is against them ! 

Ned Tes. They conspire against the rest of the community. 

Tes. The very watchmen have their own pockets picked 
while asleep on their posts ! 

Ned Tes. They are so used to a-resting, that they can do 
it with their eyes shut. 

Tes. Why do the authorities fail to prevent prize fights, 
that every body knows of beforehand, except themselves 1 ? 
Why is not a stop put to boxing matches 1 

Ned Tes. Matches ought to be boxed, to prevent being 
scattered about and setting fire to things : in which case there 
is more disturbance, as the fire-engine is not necessarily a 
moral engine. 

Tes. And in case of a fight between two companies, the 
police always arrive in time to arrest the spectators. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 175 

The pavior who coholes half the street and blocks the whole. 

Sen. If we lacked information in respect to the loafer nui- 
sance, the ladies could (in the language of the sturdy and 
unrestrained beggary of the day) 




GIVE US A LITTLE MORE 



Tes. That Perrine pavement, I'd — I'd — 

Sen. Perrine, I confess, is an abuse that one does not have 
to look into the papers to see. In fact, you only have to go 
to them for an alleviation, in the amusement to be got from 
the jibes and vituperation and attacks of every sort they heap 
upon it. Nothing could be more magnificent than the unani- 
mous and spirited charge of the journal squadron, unless it 
were the manner in which he threw himself into the centre of 
a square, and withstood it. 

Ned Tes. Or the charge he made on the city treasury 
when he got through. 

Sen. The amusement is something. And then consider 
how kind it was of the omnibus drivers to turn out a whole 
block, as they did for months, that their fellow-citizens might 
not be irritated by the sight of the unmoved inventor, that 
great man of brass ! 

Ned Tes. Colossus of streets, he may be called, in contra- 
distinction to that other wonder of the world, that great man 
of brass, the Colossus of Rhodes. 

Sen. No doubt but he is a man of good intentions, and 



17G THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

"We're in the reforming vein. Our efforts are probably in vain too. 

the worst we can wish him is, that he should go where they 
would be of most use to him as a pavior ! 

Ned Tes. Quousque tandem (and all other sorts of vehicles) 
abutere, O Perrina? &c. Or, what amounts to the same 
thing : O Buss quando te aspiciam 1 

58. When one half of the street is deep with mud, (collected in the 
morning, and distributed gradually by the wheels, instead of being carried 
away,) and the other half quite respectable — to ruin your temper and your 
patent leathers in crossing the muddy half, and then have your further 
progress nipped in the bud by being cut off by the first of a line of 
walking omnibuses, gradually widening and breaking into a trot toward 
its lower end, so as to compel a precipitate retreat over the ground just 
travelled. 

Sen. How very Irish that plan of the street-sweepers is ! 
There you may see them, day after day, risking their precious 
bones and broomsticks by insinuating their way through the 
crowded streets to roll up masses that are never carried 
away ! A regular Sysiphean labor ! 

Ned Tes. 

" I meet them on their winding way? 

which is only characteristic of the Co?^s crew employed. 

Sen. The streets are pretty nearly unmitigated annoy- 
ances as they are. But we shall have Russ in Urbe all over 
one of these days. 

Tes. Even the best pavement is bad enough after a 
freezing rain or hail-storm. For instance — 

59. To find yourself poised, both feet together 

Ned Tes. It's a bad plan to poise-on your feet, if it is at 
all like my school misery of poisoning my hands. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 177 

Ice calls for slippers as naturally as water does for pumps. 

60. To find yourself poised, both feet together, in the midst of a glare 
of ice, so slippery that it is with the utmost difficulty and danger you can 
make the least effort of propulsion. 




AN ICE PROSPECT. 



Ned Tes. One of the modern city politicians would be the 
person to consult in your dilemma. Their whole lives being 
one continued effort to get off-ice, they have no lack of expe- 
rience. 

61. "To fall a victim, spoiling your clothes and your temper. 

Ned Tes. To the victor belong the spoils, not the victim ; 
according to the politician aforesaid. 

Tes. Ned, your puns are a nuisance. 

Ned Tes. Begging your pardon, sir, the nuisance is in what 
you say ; at least I find a new sense for every few words. 

Sen, Stick to the new scents of the city of New York. No 



178 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Sick transit : from the odor of flowery buds to that of Bowery floods. 

one need look farther, even for the greatest variety. Not 
even the famous city of Cologne, with its 

" Eleven thousand virgins, and forty thousand" — 

iinjilcasant odors, can vie with it. Coleridge ends his rather 
coarse epigram on Cologne 

Ned Tes. Eau de (ous) Cologne 

Sen. — With these lines: 

" The river Rhine, it is well known, 
Doth wash tbe city of Cologne ; 
Now tell, ye nymphs, what power divine 
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine !" 

Ned. He does not countenance the popular idea that 
the Cologne water we have, is a fair sample of the Rhine after 
performing the city's ablutions, or that the "natural smell" 
of the inhabitants can be judged therefrom. 

Sen. No. The anomalous origin of the most celebrated 
perfume in the world is to be accounted for by the old 
proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention." 

Ned Tes. We need seek no father then, I suppose. 

62. To arrive in town, on a sultry summer day, by the Harlem or 
New Haven Railroad, after a morning ride through the sunny counties 
that look upon the Sound. 

Ned Tes. " The breezy sound of incense-breathing morn." 
Sen. Don't make a misquotation, Ned, even for a good 
pun. 

Ned. The compliment reconciles me to the rebuke. 

63. To arrive thus, with fastidious nostrils, and then to accompany 
the train " usque ad nauseam." In other words, to go down to the lower 
depot through the sickening smells of Centre street. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 179 

Pa^-ological researches. Has our work any mission but dis-mission ? 

Ned Tes. The ventre on which turns — the stomach. The 
scenter of all the vicinity. 

64. To have to hunt up a Mend in one of the newly-settled streets of 
the city, where every man seems, when he moved in, to have brought the 
number-plate of the house he lived in before, and put it up over his door, 
without the remotest reference to the number his distant next neighbor 
may happen to show. 

Tes. In other cities, where the streets are not numbered, 
but named, you have besides to look for the street itself, and 
nobody, ever appears to know where it is. 1 undertook a job 
of that sort in Brooklyn, not long ago. I wanted to find 
Wintergreenberry street, or some such ridiculous name, and 
wherever I stopped I gathered a small crowd around me of 
people w r ho had not the slightest idea. 

65. On arriving at an unknown village, with but one numbered street, 
to begin at number one, to go to number five hundred, and to find when 
you get to the end of the street that the fools have numbered up one side 
and down the other, instead of the whole street along, (odd numbers one 
side and even the other.) and consequently 500 is nearly opposite the place 
you started from. 

Tes. That ought rather to go into the travelling miseries, 
I think. In England they always do so; in Italy, all through 
the town, to thousands. 

Sen. Leave that out, then, for we have filled up the meas- 
ure of our iniquities. The cup is full. Our thousand and 
one nights are passed away as a tale that is 

Ned Tes. Trod on. Say rather our thousand and one 

mournings. 

Tes. Alas for the fertility of our subject, and the futility 
of our efforts to exhaust it ! It wants but a little of our 
accustomed hour for breaking up, and we seem no nearer the 



180 THE MISEBIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Plans. An outline of the forces— a mere shell, having no colonel. 

limit of what we could find to put down than when we first 
began ! 

Ned Tes. The hours of the meeting are up, before the 
minutes are all down. 

Tes. There is one thing that can hardly be classed with 
the little miseries of human life. But it is a "stunner," 
wherever it belongs, and will do for a parting gun to rake the 
forces of the contemners of our system. 

66. To be examined and cross-examined as a witness, by what is 
called a " smart" lawyer ! 

Ned Tes. The smart appertains rather to the examinee. 

Tes. Your consternation at finding your well-considered 
statement no more than so much putty in his hands, and 
that you almost begin to disbelieve it yourself! And your 
impotent rage at his impudent efforts to throw you out ! 

Ned Tes. That, no doubt, suggested to the poet the line 
which runs somewhat like this : 

" Great mad to witness nearly is allied." 

Tes. Well, now we have enlisted our army, what shall we 
do with them ? 

Sen. Do with them ! Aren't we done with them ? 

Tes. Certainly not. What we have done is but little 
more than make a list of the forces, from the least to the 
greatest. 

Ned Tes. A roll-call of the whole army, from Private 
Griefs and Corporal Ailments, up to General Ills. 

Tes. Now, it remains to send it out to revolutionize the 
world. Sensitive, we must publish ! 

Sen. To what end ? Not without some object. I never 
would put pen to paper merely for the name of having writ- 
ten a book. 



THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 181 

All appears to be dished : or, what's equivalent, \>e-trayed. 

Ned Tes. In other words, you do not ink-line to be called 
an author. 

Sen. One question is, who would read our book if we did 1 

Tes. Who % Why, every body. People would buy it as 
they go to see a tragedy, and weep at it with the greatest 
delight. There is a morbid tendency in the human mind to 
dwell on human misery. 

Ned Tes. The book should be sold at auction, if it is to 
supply a more-bid demand. 

Sen. I don't believe in that tendency. I have a different 
theory from that, for the tragedy taste. I believe that the 
principal part of that anomaly is the unconscious satisfaction 
we experience in comparing the fictitious miseries with our 
own personal lot, and felicitating ourselves with the contrast. 
Now, our affair is entirely distinct from any thing of that sort. 
It only reminds the reader either of sorrows of his own, before 
understood, though not expressed, or of others all the while 
imminently impending over him. 

Tes. At any rate, you'Jl agree with me, that we have 
established the point we set out to prove 1 ? 

Sen. The fact is, Testy, to myself I have proved just the 
contrary. Looking over this mass of scraps, the product of 
our sociable and agreeable occupation, has convinced me that 
it needs only a little real misfortune to heal our unreal and 
artificial ones — that our mole-hills are only respectable from 
having no mountains to compare them with. I shall have 
to thank this episode in my life for making me, I hope, a 
wiser, and, in future, a happier man. Our miseries look to 
me like so many illustrations of the fact, that we are prone to 
manufacture unhappiness when, as in our case, the ready-made 
article is kept out by a tariff of prosperity — a literally pro- 
tective system. 



182 THE MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The greatest misery of all for the reader— the end. 

Ned Tes. A real sliding scale — not of duties exactly, but 
rather of immunities from any thing of the sort. 

Tes. I have not looked at one of them since it was set 
down. Perhaps I should laugh at them as well as you, after 
forgetting the impulse that conceived them. 

Sen. If I did not believe that that would be the effect on 
the reader, as well as on the writer, I would never consent to 
their publication. The very intensity of the pleasure you 
have found as a champion combating for the cause ought to 
convince you that there is pure pleasure in action of any sort. 

Ned Tes. {aside.) Ought a soldier to find his pleasure 
in tents ? 

Sen. After all, Testy, if this is a pretty hard world — 

What are we going to do about it ? 



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Philarete Chasles' Notabilities in France and England, 

With his Autobiography, &c, &c. 

Future Volumes will oe announced s7w?'tl>/. 

[See page 8, inside of cover. 



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